Week 6 – There are signs on the trail saying “When passing, give verbal warning”

This was a very light week, except for the weekend. I ended up getting sick with a chest/head cold on Wednesday which lasted for a couple of days. My body probably needed a bit of a break anyway, so I lounged around a lot.

Week 6: current weight 168, +8 lbs. from Week 1
Monday: Shoulders and chest weight training
Tuesday: Bike to work and home w/ light pack, shoulder and back weight training
Wednesday: Sick
Thursday: Sick
Friday: Day off (hike on Saturday this week, wanna be fresh for it!)
Saturday: 14 mile hike w/ heavy pack
Sunday: 18 mile bike ride w/ no pack

The several days of no physical activity before the hike really paid off. This week’s hike was great, with three things that really stood out: 2 miles further than we’d gone before, we did 6 miles between break one and two as opposed to our normal 4, and we kicked up the pace significantly on the last 4 miles to almost 5 miles an hour. Even with the greatly increased pace on the last 4 miles, we finished very strong…albeit in a lot of pain.

With the break plan we used this week, Hell’s Hill happened at about a mile and a half before our second break (which was at the 10 mile point this week). We purposely didn’t rest or slow down at the top of Hell’s Hill, which we paid for, but it really felt good to trash the hill and keep on going.

We discovered some new reactions on the trail this week from the other trail users, although the pattern remained mostly the same. We’re still working on why people’s reactions to us are so different between the first half of our hikes and the last half. We have a new theory that might apply.

Jeff noticed that for the first 10 miles or so, I’ve been very understanding when people pass you within a foot, with no verbal warning, and scare the crap out of you when they go flying by (the packs we’re wearing make enough brushing and creaking noises at our pace to pretty much cover up the sound of runners/bicyclists approaching from behind). By about mile 10 however, I start getting pretty grumpy about it. By mile 12, I start cursing, and even once said to a guy “Hey man, how about a little warning?!?” after he passed so close that he literally brushed my arm. So, Jeff’s new theory is that it goes beyond a “haggard look” that we may have from the miles of hiking and into new territory…perhaps we look angry. Like, angry enough to bite someone’s head off if they look at us funny. I have to appreciate the weight of the theory. We are finding that after enough miles and enough pain, we generally are kind of angry and grumpy until the last mile or so when the elation of the fact that we’re almost done for the day hits.

In any event, on to the new reactions. This week, two different people stopped what they were doing to ask us what we were training for. This took a couple of miles of thinking to figure out that it is indeed obvious that we’re training for something. The biggest clue was that in the weeks we’ve been doing this, neither of us has seen anyone else with backpacks on. Even more, I’ve been on the trail regularly for the past year and a half, and I have yet to see a single other individual with a backpack. I assumed people would just think we’re your run of the mill backpacker, but once again Jeff proved he’s smarter than I am by pointing out that the Perkiomen Trail doesn’t really *go* anywhere. It’s really kind of point A to point B. It doesn’t hook up to the Appalachian Trail or anything. So anyone who really takes notice of the backpacks and thinks about it for a minute or two is going to realize that we must be training for something, because no one would be stupid enough to don a huge pack and walk just for the sake of walking with a huge pack. Jeff and I bantered back and forth a bit about why all of a sudden this week people were taking more of an interest in what we’re doing. In the end, we agreed that the difference between people on the trail on Saturday and those on the trail on Sunday must be significant, as this was the first Saturday hike we’ve done. It must be that the people who we see on Saturday are the more outgoing and personable of the two groups, and therefore are more likely to go out Saturday night. They then would be nursing Sunday morning hangovers, which is why we didn’t see them until this week.

So we got to explain about the Bataan Memorial Death March to a few people, about where it is, when it is, why it’s an event and the importance of memorializing something so tragic. One guy had never heard of the Bataan Death March but was interested in it when we explained, and the other guy knew all about it and thought that it was extremely cool that there is a yearly event dedicated to the memory of it.

One thing was a bit frustrating about the hike this week. Periodically throughout the hike, I had pain in the left knee that felt exactly like the tendinitis I was diagnosed with in the same knee earlier this year. I hadn’t felt it at all in the past several months, even on my 5.7 mile pack runs that I’ve been doing regularly. So, I’m going to have to watch the knee. Next week I will be sure to wear the little knee strap I picked up back in the early spring for the tendinitis and see if that helps any.

Stay tuned next week for my first “off the Perk Trail” hike. My wife and I are packing up the kids and headed to the Lackawanna State Forest in the Poconos to camp overnight, and I’m going to do part of the Pinchot trail while we’re there. Going to shoot for 14 again, but we’ll see, I might go farther.

Question for the reader: Besides “not getting sick”, what could I have done better this week training wise? Knowing something now about my goals, where I am, what I know I need to work on, etc, what could I change and/or do better?