Week 7 - Lackawanna State Forest/Pinchot Trail

This was a good workout week, with the exception of a minor injury that lasted for about 4 days. On Tuesday I was stupid, and went for a light shoulder workout after doing a heavy shoulder workout the day before. I know better than to do that, but I did it anyway. About halfway through Tuesday’s workout, I felt a pop and immediate pain in the left shoulder. The pain lasted a few days, so I took Wednesday off, went with a run on Thursday, and off again on Friday. I ended up being lucky with it, and the pain was gone by Saturday morning…but it was enough that I learned my lesson. I’m still emphasizing shoulder/back/chest weights, but I’ll tone it down a notch.

Week 7: current weight 168, +8 lbs. from Week 1 (no change)
Monday: Bike to work and home w/ light pack, shoulder and back weight training
Tuesday: Run home from work w/ light pack, chest and shoulder weight training
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Run to work w/ light pack
Friday: Off (Hike tomorrow!)
Saturday: 2.5 mile hike w/65-70 lbs. pack, approximately 8 mile hike w/35 lbs. pack
Sunday: 2.5 mile hike w/65-70 lbs. pack
Monday: 36 mile bike ride

To say that I enjoyed the Pinchot trail would be an understatement. It was beautiful. It was also very different from our standard workout on the Perkiomen Trail. On the Perk Trail, Jeff and I have been going pretty fast on the flat terrain and solid footing. The Pinchot trail has widely variable grade, and lots and lots of rocks. There is no going fast. However, the constant need to adjust stride to get from rock to rock plus the continuous ups and downs made for a very good workout, working leg muscles that I don’t really get to on the Perk Trail on a regular basis. The workout was much more strength based, and much less endurance based. I got a lot out of it despite not being able to get the mileage I had set as an expectation beforehand. Not that it mattered much if at all, as the time I spent on the hike was equivalent to the time it takes to do a 14 miler.

The weekend worked out really well. Ingrid and I packed up the kids on Saturday morning, chucked the dog in the car, and headed north. When we got there, we put little packs on the girls, Ingrid had her standard pack, and I had my 35 lbs. of regular stuff plus all of the camping stuff that didn’t make it into Ingrid’s pack. My pack totaled about 65-70 lbs., which was heavy. The first comment I made when I put on the pack was “Geez, this feels like a Marine Corps pack.” The packs we humped with in the Corps were definitely heavier than the 35 lbs. I’ve been hiking with. I’d forgotten that point until just then.

At about two and a half miles, we got to the campsite and I unpacked all the extra stuff from my pack. (It was the third one we passed, and by far the best – even if the girls were ready to stop at the second one. *grin*) Ingrid and the girls stayed at the campsite, set up our tent, searched for firewood, etc., while I went on for the rest of my hike with the normal weight. I was proud of the girls, they did a great job, didn’t complain (much) and had a blast overall.

The Geo-locational updates worked very well. I’m pleased to report that, provided there is good signal at White Sands Missile Range, I’ll be able to keep followers up-to-date during the 26 miler next spring.

I did miss having Jeff along on the hike. Without the conversations we have while hiking, I don’t really have anything humorous to share from this week. The conversations I have with myself when I’m out there are fairly dry and I’ll avoid discussing them so as to not alarm those who read this.

The disappointment from this weekend was my High Sierra pack. It failed. Over the past several months, small things have been annoying with it. The chest strap broke early on, one of the zipper pulls broke a week or so after that, and this weekend the stitching on one of the sleeping bag lifter straps pulled out. We went to REI Sunday after we got back and returned it. I love REI for that…they don’t care that you’ve had something a little while before you discover an issue, or why you don’t like it, they’ll simply take it back – and were pleasant about it, despite the fact that we bought the pack a year ago.

The guy in the hiking department there was extremely helpful but frustrated because the pack he wanted me to have (“Man, this pack would be PERFECT for you”), he’d just sold the last of. His suggestion was that he really wanted me in a Deuter Aircontact 65+10 pack and that if we ordered it online we could always return it to the store location if we didn’t like it. So that’s what we did. Many thanks to Eric at the Conshohocken REI store. He also had me try on an REI-branded pack that I also liked, but apparently I needed an in-between size on it – the supports just weren’t fitting against my back properly once we weighted it.

I rounded out the week and spent my Labor Day afternoon on the mountain bike on the Perk Trail, doing 36 miles total. I was still sore from the weekend hike(s), and figured it was a good time to push myself and see what I could do. I started at the 8 mile mark where 7th Ave crosses Rt. 29 and headed north up to the 18 mile mark at Green Lane Park. On the way back, I kept a great pace, nailed Hell’s Hill, and kept the pace up back to the 8 mile mark, took a quick break and decided I wasn’t done yet. So I went south down to the 0 mile mark on the trail and turned around and came back. I don’t mind telling you that the last 8 miles was seriously touch and go. Total time was about three and a half hours. It was a good day, and a great way to finish off the week.