Serious Training Begins

Joe modeling his sleeping bag liner on a really cold training
hike in the Pine Barrens. We were training with our backpacks
loaded up with all kinds of things. Karin was even toting big
cans of yams in her pack!


While writing in my hiking journal last night, I decided to check my mileage to date this month. 24.6 miles, not bad considering I didn’t walk or hike at all last weekend and did next to nothing during election week. Then I laughed when I realized that kind of mileage represented a about two days walking on the Camino!



I hike every just about every weekend now because I love doing it, it feels good. I try to take a walk most days during the week, either at lunch or after work. Moving from the suburbs to an old-fashioned people and pedestrian-oriented town, walking is now a form of transportation as well as recreation. Living in a quasi-urban environment, even the dogs get walked several times a day. It's just so much easier to walk to places in town than it is to drive. Quite a switch from last year, when the bulk of my walking was done to and from the car!



I don’t think in terms of training when I walk or hike. I keep my focus on the moment, the experience. As a result, time flies! When a hike leader announces a lunch stop, I think wow, we’ve already gone what four or five miles? My lunchtime stroll seems to be over just when I feel like I’m getting started, it doesn’t seem to drag on forever like it did before, when I was "training" for my last Camino.



True to our word, my Camino companions and I began training for Camino right at the start of the new year. Karin and I each started taking walks at lunchtime. Our little crew hiked pretty much every weekend. Most times, it was just us hiking locally in the Pine Barrens or on the Pemberton Rails to Trails path. We did travel to New York state to climb the Timp with Rich and Bob took us on a great adventure hike out by Washington’s Crossing as well as a few new places for us in the Pine Barrens.



Though the hikes were still fun and there was lots of comradery, they felt somehow different from our earlier hikes. Longer and more tedious. The miles just dragged. Maybe it was the cold, the extra miles, the ever increasing weight we were throwing in our packs. Perhaps I was dehydrated, hung over or didn’t get enough sleep the night before. Or maybe it was just that I started to think of it as work and so, that’s how it felt. Pace became to trouble me, no matter how hard I pushed I could not keep up with Joe and Karin. Poor Ray, he usually got relegated to the rear with me. We joked about death marches as I tried to push my pace!



So take the added physical stress, toss in a bit of frustration and a self-inflicted sense of defeat and then wonder why the hikes seemed to be a lot more grueling than they used to!