Week 5

So far I’ve used the term “we” a lot in discussing our weekend hikes. “We” consists of a friend named Jeff who is along on this thing as a catalyst to get him back in shape, and me. He does have a hiking background but has never been in the military, so is sometimes fairly perplexed when he encounters some of my rituals…such as my insistence on changing my socks every four miles. This sock ritual was beaten into my skull while in the Corps. Every rest stop (10 minutes of each hour), you take off your boots, dry your feet, administer moleskin as necessary, take 2 Motrin (also known as Superman pills or “Marine Candy”), and change your socks. This is what you do. It’s like one of those irreversible laws of physics, and there is no questioning it. Jeff just kind of shakes his head at all this, but is glad for the break. What I firmly believe Jeff does not yet realize (and I keep telling him this) is that when we get to the 20+ mile point, he will learn that there are two options: be right there with me changing socks and slathering strips of moleskin on his feet, or spend the rest of the week walking gingerly trying not to pop the blisters all over them. We’ll see.

Week 5: current weight: 165, +5 lbs. from Week 1
Monday: Shoulders and back weight training
Tuesday: Run to work w/ light pack
Wednesday: Off (Hershey Park w/ the kids!)
Thursday: Shoulders and chest weight training
Friday: Run to work w/ light pack
Saturday: Off
Sunday: 12 mile hike w/ heavy pack

Nothing really stood out this week, other than the fact that the weight training is resulting in significantly heavier weights than when I started. That’s to be expected, of course, but I’m a bit surprised on the speed of the weight increase. That said, my shoulders are still killing me after the longer hikes, so there’s a lot more work to be done there.

This week was the second 12 miler we did, and it went significantly better in the more comfortable temps. We were dead tired when we were done, of course, but compared to last week’s hike this was a winner.

I’m beginning to put less emphasis on the hike with heavy pack to work. I’ve noticed during the longer hikes that the difference between 6 miles and even 10 miles is huge. On the longer hikes, I’m not even starting to get tired until the 6-7 mile mark. I get the feeling that I’m not getting a whole lot out of the 5.74 miles to work and then home again, and I might be able to spend that time more beneficially in the weight room or running. I’m going to mull that one over for another week and see how I feel about it then.

As a side note, you may (or may not, I don’t know) have wondered what’s in my pack? I’ve always been a firm believer in training the way you fight, or harder, so I’ve taken pains to make the training hikes as similar as possible to what we expect to experience next spring. One of the cool things about the Memorial Death March is that they encourage entrants in the Heavy Division (us! Woohoo!) to carry canned goods, bagged rice, and other foodstuffs to make up the 35 lbs. At the finish line, there is a food donation area, where you can empty your pack and it gets donated to the local New Mexico food bank. This seems like a good cause to me, and since I train the way I fight, my pack is currently stuffed with canned soup, plastic bottles of salad dressing, Hormel Chili, and pretty much everything else that was in the pantry that Ingrid (my wife) decided had been in there too long and wasn’t likely to get used anytime soon. Being hard-headed as I tend to be, I have 40 lbs. of that stuff in there because in my little mind that means that next spring, 35 lbs. will feel light. I know that’s not really true, and that at mile 25, I’m not only not going to be able to tell the difference between 40 lbs. and 35 lbs., but anything more than 5 lbs. is going to be excruciating anyway. Still, that’s the way I like to do things, and it makes me feel better.

In any event, Jeff said something on last week’s hike that had me chuckling from mile 8 through mile 10 (when my shoulders started hurting so bad I couldn’t think of anything else until the end). We had noticed that in the beginning of the hike that morning, lots of people (bikers, runners, dog walkers, etc) were greeting us cheerfully with a “Good Morning” or whatever, but that by mile 6 people started ignoring us, or avoiding us, or giving us cross-eyed looks. We surmised that our general appearance had likely changed from cheerful and refreshed ourselves, at the beginning, to somewhat haggard, thirsty, sweaty, etc. and that we were both carrying fairly taciturn looks on our faces by that point from the pain of the weight and the sweltering heat. We decided that we probably began to look like the typical long distance trail hikers that walk for days or weeks, breeze through towns, sleep where they can, that sort of thing.

What got Jeff to chuckling, which he passed on to me was what would happen if we both got hit by a car, or struck by lightning or whatever and some cops and paramedics came across our unconscious and/or dead forms in a crosswalk or on the trail? They’d look for identification, and would likely go through our packs to find it.

At which point, they would find these big old packs stuffed with franks and beans, cans of spam, salad dressing, and in Jeff’s case a 10 lbs. weight on top of it all. I could clearly visualize the look on a paramedic’s face holding up a can of Chef Boyardee saying “What the hell?”