Training for the Trail

That’s the way to see the world: in our own bodies.

Gary Snyder

In my much younger years I took up running, not because I liked it, but because I needed an efficient way of maintaining and increasing my cardiovascular fitness so that I could be ready for the trails every summer. I had signed up for a group backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon, and in order to be accepted on the trip I had to submit what was essentially a fitness resume. I took the challenge seriously and began a rigorous training schedule, eventually working up to ten miles a day.

Running was an efficient means of training, and as a young single mother with a full-time job that was important to me. I never liked it though. That ecstatic “runners’ high” that committed runners describe with such enthusiasm always escaped me. I did it because it was good for me, like eating spinach and kale.

It must have worked, for on that Grand Canyon trip I tackled the steep climbs in the heat of the desert without difficulty. As long as I was running regularly I could take off into the mountains in the early summer and hardly notice that I was working hard every single day. It was satisfying to feel that strength and stamina, and it made the backpacking trips more enjoyable when I did not need to stop and catch my breath while ascending a mountain pass.

In my forties I stopped running. My career was going well by then, and my work days were longer. There were more demands on my time as my daughters became teenagers and started playing soccer. But perhaps the most important reason was that I did not want to spend my limited time doing something I did not like at all. That lesson has stayed with me and is a worthy one, especially as I age. Training needs to be an enjoyable activity, or I will not do it. I want my life to be more than spinach and kale.

Many years later when I had retired and was in my sixties I was still looking for ways to keep myself fit so that I could continue my yearly journeys into the mountains near my home. I bought a Nordic Track ski machine, which was fun, but I never felt that it gave me the workout I needed.

When my daughter, Leah, and I decided to hike the Washington section of the Pacific Crest Trail I knew that I had to get serious about training. I had a year to do that. I hired a trainer at the gym where I worked out and over that year I lifted weights and used the stair climber to increase my cardiovascular fitness. When Leah and I began the trail on a hot morning in July near the Columbia River, it was apparent after the first steep climb that all of that boring stair climbing had not prepared me for the rigors of this steep trail and a heavy pack. It had been like consuming a steady diet of spinach and kale but without the benefits I had hoped for. I succeeded in completing that hike, and certainly by the end of it I was in better shape than when I began but no thanks to the stair climber.

That experience taught me something, a lesson I took seriously when I was training for another long hike a few years later. The way to prepare for such a journey is to hike, to pound our feet against the trail, to carry that pack, and to ascend the heights.

I began training in January, exactly six months from the date I planned to start my hike of the Pacific Northwest Trail. Fortunately I lived on an island where there was a state park with a network of nice trails just a mile from my home. I walked everyday, rain or shine, keeping track of my mileage and adding a mile every week so that by the summertime I was walking seven to eight miles a day and adding steep climbs to increase my cardiovascular fitness. Since I lived close to the Olympic Mountains I began to take a long hike with a pack at least once a week, aiming for twenty miles in a single day.

I was nearing seventy that summer, but I had probably achieved the greatest level of fitness I have ever experienced. I felt alive and optimistic about life, as if I could overcome any obstacle that showed up on the trail of my life. I succeeded on my hike of the Pacific Northwest Trail, and though I encountered route-finding difficulties, fires, and other challenges along the way, I knew that I had created something wonderful that would serve me well as I aged in the years to come . . .a healthy strong body.

The way we prepare for a hike is the same way that we prepare for life. We let the trail challenge us at times, taking us to those high places that seem impossible but are always worth the extraordinary effort to get there. We stop and rest, savoring the views that surround us, breathing in the rarefied air. We shoulder our packs in the morning and get back on the long trail, letting our feet touch the good earth that supports us, loving the journey.