What Are You Eating?

I don't know if any of you caught the really nasty cold that seemed to hit in April just as spring returned, but I was nailed by two different versions of it. It seems like I've been recovering from having a cold for a month! I'm mostly better now with the exception of a really chesty cough that seems to hit me mostly after I'm done exercising or when I lie down to sleep at night. It's very annoying and just seems to hang around forever. I have still managed to get out do some running training and do a few hikes, but I don't really feel on top of my game. My energy level is lower than usual and I'm more tired after my long runs than I should be. 

While you can't always control your energy levels due to health issues, another thing that dramatically affects your energy level is the food you consume both before and during the hikes.   

As we get closer to our June hikes, you’ll notice that the hikes will be getting a little bit more difficult, including more distance and gain. I encourage you to take a look at the food that you bring along with you and make sure that it’s adequate for your needs on the trip. All groups will be in the 8 mile range which means that you need to not only need to bring a filling lunch, but you also need to bring snacks to have along the way. Make sure that the food you are bringing along is around 60% carbohydrate, 20% fat and 20% protein. Your snacks particularly need to be mostly carbohydrate as that will provide you with quick energy as you hike. Make sure your snacks are accessible without taking off your pack, so you can snack as soon as you feel the need.  

After you get back from a hike, assess how you felt during the hike. Did you feel generally energetic and able to tackle the challenges of the trail, or did you feel listless and lack energy? While some of this can be attributed to physical conditioning, it can also be affected by what you eat and when you eat it. Don't wait to eat food until you're hungry or feeling your blood sugar plummet. Be proactive and have a small snack every hour or so--more often as your energy output increases during the season. 

And be sure to have a good breakfast before you head off in the morning to meet your group; or if it’s too early for you to feel like eating, bring something with you to snack on during the car trip. Don’t start a hike feeling hungry, you’ll already be low on energy if you do and will have a hard time getting into your hiking pace and then you’ll be playing food catch-up all day—not a great place to be in energy-wise. My favorite breakfast foods are homemade smoothie, (banana, other fruit, yogurt, water or watered-down juice, and a scoop of whey protein  powder) and oatmeal (nicely beefed up with a bit of brown sugar and whole milk). Both are fairly easy to take along with you and eat in the car if you can figure out a way to keep the oatmeal warm until you can eat it.  

Happy hiking (and eating)! 

Getting in Some Hill Work

On Saturday, Matt and I met up with a couple of CHS hiking friends and hiked Umtanum Ridge. We met up at the Preston P&R and imagine our surprise when we encountered two other groups of CHS hikers rendezvousing for their hike also! It was nice to see seasoned and new CHSers heading off for a fun hike on a beautiful day! 

I'd never been to the Umtanum area before and had heard that the flower displays this time of year are pretty spectacular. It did not disappoint--my favorite lupine was in abundance everywhere and smelled wonderful! It was also a nice day and the views were pretty spectacular from the ridge as well. If you haven't done this trail before, it should be on your early season list. But one thing I should warn you about is the steepness of the hike. The last quarter mile of the hike up to the ridge is incredibly steep and knowing how to do the rest step is important. It's also extremely helpful if you have seasoned yourself on a few hills first too. 

There are a few ways to prepare for hiking up hills that you can do around town in a short period of time. If you work in or near a building with several flights of stairs you can walk up and down the stairs with or without weight. It works even better if you can turn it into an interval or Fartlek training session by walking fast or running up the stairs for 30-60 seconds and then walking down the stairs for double that time.  Repeat that 10-15 times each. Throw in a warm up and cool down period and you've got a quick workout that will prime you for hiking hills. 

Another way to practice hills is to find a good hill or series of hills in your neighborhood and walk or run up and down them for 45-60 minutes at least once a week. You can also make this into an interval as well. If you live on the eastside near the Tolt Pipeline trail, this is an awesome place to do that. But Seattle is full of good hills so I'm sure you can find something that will work. Throw on a pack with 10-15 lbs of weight to add a little challenge and up the weight occasionally to increase the workout once you've gotten used to previous weight.  

Doing this type of training at least once a week will really help you motor up the hills on your hikes a lot faster and with less exertion. Even the really steep ones will seem easier!

Getting Social

Last weekend I participated in the Mt Si Relay Race with Steve Payne and three other CHS graduates. We ran a 59 mile course and each participant ran two legs out of ten total legs. The legs varied in length and elevation gain/loss. We had a great time despite intermittent rain showers throughout the day.  

We got our results a few days later and while we weren't competitive we did pretty well. Aside from the running, the best part of the day for me was spent catching up with the other runners; I hadn't seen a couple of the people in a few years and we had some catching up to do.  

I'm not a real social person. As an introvert I suck at making small talk and I love to spend time alone, but I find I really enjoy spending time talking with fellow runners and hikers. The time just seems to fly when I'm running down the road or hiking up a trail with others. Sharing an activity together, it's easy to find things to talk about whether it's the scenery, the weather, how we're feeling, or some other topic that pops up.  Steep switchbacks don't seem so bad when I've got something interesting to talk about. Plus it makes me moderate my pace a bit so I'm not hiking up the hill too fast and huffing and puffing. 

Even if you're not the most social person in the world, I hope that as the summer progresses you will also enjoy hiking and talking with other folks who share your hiking interest. So here's a challenge I'm issuing to everyone reading this: Try to talk to everyone on your hike for at least a few minutes. You might find that you have something in common. At the very least, you'll get to know a little bit more about your fellow hikers. 

I Confess My Lack of Personal Responsibility in Utah

In this email I'm going to admit to violating a basic tenet of the CHS Way on my trip to Utah and in retrospect I feel like a total heel for doing it. The overarching tenet is "We bring personal responsibility to the group." I am admitting here and now to what I did on the Utah trip in the hopes that others might learn from it. I admit to: treating my hike leader (in this case my friend who was organizing the trip) as a tour guide whose personal mission was to make sure I had a good time. There, I've said it! 

How did I do this? By not finding out a single scrap of information about our hikes or our backpack trip beforehand. Heck I didn't even  buy a damn map of the area or look at a single hiking book that described the trips even when I had them sitting in front of me! Instead I followed my friend around like a sheep expecting her to tell me all about the trips and what challenges I might expect. As you might remember from my last posting--this plan turned out kindly of poorly for my feet. It also meant that we when we got the trailhead for our backpack trip, I didn't have a friggin' clue as to which direction our trail was supposed to go from the trailhead. If you haven't hiked in the desert before, I can tell you that washes sometime look like trails and the terrain all looks a lot alike. 

So needless to say, we headed off in the wrong direction and spent about an hour trying to figure out what we were doing. I wasn't any help in the trail navigation because I was the only one in the group that hadn't read any trail beta. When we finally got back to where our car was parked to regroup, I was feeling pretty sheepish and admitted to my friend that I was guilty of treating her as my tour guide and resolved to behave differently. I still didn't have a damn map of the area, but I did pay attention the route for the rest of the trip and made sure we were on a trail on our travels through the desert. 

Oh sure I have lots of great excuses as to why I behaved this way--I was really busy at work before the trip and had been dealing with a lot of stress beforehand, blah, blah, blah. But none of it counts for a hill of beans. I should have been more prepared. I should've bought a map of the areas we were going to beforehand and I should've read the trail descriptions so I could provide meaningful input to the group's decisions on where to go. 

So this is my advice to you: be an active participant on all of your hikes. Don't be guilty of treating a hike leader or a friend (if you're going on a private trip) as a tour guide, expecting them to know everything about the trail and destination. Bring a map and read up on the trail before you go so that you can provide meaningful input on navigation or route finding should the need arise. Plus it's just really nice to know about where you're going should adverse circumstances arise (I'm sure you would never plan to get lost would you?).  

So be sure to bring this up next time you're with me on a hike. I deserve it. But I won't be behaving that way again in the future, you can count on it.

Anticipating conditions

I've been out of town for awhile, going on a hiking and backpacking trip in Utah with some CHS girl friends. We had a great time and saw some pretty amazing sights. And I spent some of my time doing some research for a return trip with Matt. And of course, I had a few experiences which should provide some good subject matter for this blog. I'll relate them over the next couple of weeks.  

I like to think of myself as pretty experienced hiker and backpacker. I try to anticipate things that can go wrong and mitigate them in advance. For this trip, we were going to be spending some time walking through water and sand, so I bought a pair of non-Gortex trail runners to wear for the trip. The idea was that they would easily rid themselves of water and dry out quicker--especially in all of that dry desert air. I made sure to break them in on several outings in the weeks prior to the trip. Plus a also brought along a pair of lightweight shoes I could wear to cross the rivers in. The idea being that I would change into these when we crossed the river, then would change back into my trail runners for the hiking part.  

On our first hike trip, we crossed the Escalante River about ten times going to and from a place called the Golden Cathedral. It was an awesome place to visit--well worth the trip. However we ended up crossing the river so many times that I abandoned my idea to change back into my trail runners and instead opted to keep on my water shoes for the multiple crossings there and back. I also discovered that not only does water get into your shoes, but sand as well, creating a wet gritty environment around my feet. Once I put my trail runners back on, I also discovered that sand got into my shoes pretty easily--creating a nice gritty environment.  

It was this way for five days in a row as we day-hiked two days and then went on a backpack trip into Coyote Gulch for two nights. On our second day, guess what I developed between my big toe and the next toe on my left foot? You guessed it, a big, raw blister. Water weakens the skin's toughness and the grit worked away on the tender skin between my toes. There was really nothing I could do but grin and bear it if I wanted to go out on the trips. Taping it helped somewhat, but the wet environment would eventually destroy the adhesion of the bandage and then the lovely sand would come on it to scour it out some more.  

The only real solution was to stop hiking, so after our backpack trip, I decided that I shouldn't do any more hiking and just wear flip flops so the blister could start to heal. At that point we were  heading to Capitol Reef National Park. I made the most of though, dropping my friends off at a trailhead and then checking out some cool sites I could drive to. Later I picked my friends up at a different trailhead. I also got a lot of reading done and basically enjoyed some time by myself--which I enjoy greatly. 

What did I learn? It probably would have been better to either wear some sort of water socks that would keep the grit out from around my feet. Or I should have been a little better about getting the sand out of my shoes each and every time I emerged from the water. Proactive taping before the river crossings might have been helpful too.  

Moral of the story--make sure you understand all of the conditions involved in your trip and how it might affect you. I was a bit lazy on this part--not quite catching on to the fact that we would not only be crossing water, but dealing with a lot of sand as well. The friend who planned the trip mentioned this beforehand, but I kind of forgot about it or didn't think it was important. Now I know better! 

How do you apply this on your CHS trips? The Ten Essentials provide you with a good start--making sure that you have items with you to help with both warm and sunny or cold and wet conditions. But think about other things that you can bring to improve your experience and mitigate unpleasant conditions. Would an umbrella keep the rain or sun off of you? Would some extra water or food make your day better? How about an extra pair of dry socks or shirt to change into at lunch? Would some chemical hand warmers make that cold, wet day a little better? Think about these things as you pack for your day hikes. 

Hope to see you on the trail soon! 

Enjoying the Process

Matt and I spent some time this weekend talking with a couple who is planning on hiking the John Muir Trail (JMT) later this summer. This is a 210 mile-long trail in the California Sierra Nevada region. It starts in Yosemite National Park and ends at Mt Whitney—the tallest peak in the continental US. As Matt and I and a friend are planning on doing our own trip on this trail next summer, we were talking to them about the permitting process and planning for daily distance, pack weight, food, and other gear considerations. All that discussion got me musing about the experience.

I wondered what would it be like for me to start at in Yosemite and end at the Mt Whitney Portal approximately three weeks later? What would I think about as I walked? Would I enjoy my food each day? Would I be able to overcome fatigue and pain from my exertions? Would I feel mostly positive as I walked, or would I occasionally succumb to feelings of melancholy? Would I always want to walk together with Matt and our friend or would we want to walk alone sometimes?

I have often said that one of the keys to success in long-distance day hiking is enjoying the process. This is the ability to find joy and meaning in something as simple as walking and being in nature. The goal of reaching the destination becomes secondary to enjoying the trip and each moment you spend doing it. I often compare it to working on a puzzle. People such as myself who work puzzles of many thousands of pieces don’t do it just see what the picture looks like when it’s done—we can look at the box to see that. We do it because we enjoy the process of examining each piece of the puzzle to see where it might fit in the whole. We like to experience the work in progress as we build slowly to the completed image.

I think the same experiential desire works for long-distance hiking whether it is for twenty or for several thousand miles that is involved in doing a hike like the Pacific Crest Trail.

If you are unable to cultivate an enjoyment of the hiking process, and instead focus mainly on reaching your destination, you may find longer hikes frustrating and boring. If the weather is less than stellar, if thunderclouds threaten, or if one of your companions develops a serious injury—turning the entire group around before reaching the destination—you may become angry or feel cheated from reaching your goal.

But if you enjoy the process, you will enjoy the beauty of the trail and scenery, the conversation of hiking partners, the taste of your food and cold water, and even the feeling of your body as you move on the trail. Reaching the destination will be an added pleasure—not the only one.

CHS 2013 Orientation is a Big Success!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the orientation for the participants of the 2013 CHS group. It was a lively group, with lots of conversation happening in the breakfast/lunch break portions of the day. Participants also asked lots of great questions of our presenters. The carpooling arrangements went a lot smoother this year. Which was good, because a lot of the parking areas were covered in quite a bit of snow, making parking a bit difficult for low clearance vehicles. It was nice to have cut down on about 20 extra vehicles if carpooling folks had come separately. Volunteers Francis Rondestvedt and Craig Illman directed cars to the right place to park. 

Recent snowfall was evident at the Cedar River Education Center, which got around 8 inches of snow on Friday. It fell off the Center's roofs in great loud clumps as the sun warmed up the snowpack.  

We also had a new presentation on Stretching from 2012 graduate (and current year participant!) Lindsey Mcleod. Participants learned about the benefits of stretching along with the usual presentations on Leave No Trace (Sarah Krueger) , WTA (Alan Mortimer), and Conditioning for Hiking (Ed Kula). I talked about the CHS Way complete with scenarios of a naughty hiker who looked a lot like Steve Payne. Matt Cleman ended the day with his stirring recitation of Robert Service's poem, The Call of the Wild. 

Here's a picture from the day. If you haven't been to the Education Center before, it's really a great place to hold our event. It has a large kitchen, which was staffed by CHS volunteers, Debbie Doutlick, Laura Winger, Jackie Kiser, and Debbie Graham. They put out a lovely spread of endless coffee and food and snacks brought by participants. 

The day ended with the round table discussions: Map and Compass Basics led by Bill Schecket and Hyla Dickinson; Nutrition and Hydration led by Arin Cole, and What to Bring in Your Pack, Clothing, and Footwear led by Matt Cleman. 

Our pacing hikes for the afternoon were led by Anne Ward-Ryan, Jennifer Lekisch and Steven Fogg, Lynne Dial and Stacey Lissit, and myself. Our pacing hikes had to be a bit curtailed as it was difficult to get to some trails due to snow. The group that I led up to Cedar Butte learned all about the benefits of Yaktraks and other traction devices on steep trail covered in snow. We did have awesome views though and the sun and warmer temperatures were melting the snow as we walked under the trees, dropping it on our heads and down our shirts! 

Other volunteers helped out as needed including Courtney Caryl, Jan Stephens, Leigh During, Lynne Dial and Jennifer Lekisch. I'm sure I've forgotten somebody. It was so great that there were so many folks there to help out! 

And of course CHS Administrator Steve Payne coordinated everything and kept all us doing what we were supposed to be doing. He did so much that I can't mention it all here. Many thanks to Steve for making the day a great success.  

CHS 2013 has officially started and I am certainly looking forward to another fun-filled year. I hope you are too! Let's get hiking!