Training - Up & Down

All the hiking we do around home is essentially flat. We training for the ups and downs of the trails we are looking forward to hike, especially the AT next summer. Our thoughts are changing about when to do the Georgia, our first section, AT hike. The first thought was going in August, but watching the weather lately there seems rather warm, or a better word is hot! So our thoughts are moving back to the middle of June.

We have ten and a half months to get our legs, especially knees, strengthened for terrain that has elevation changes. We are going to join a health club for over the winter months but have found a perfect outdoor training site while the weather is good.

Our town has several overflow drainage ponds for heavy rainstorms to keep water from backing up and flooding neighborhoods. The one we discovered the other day has very steep sides.

Using our trusty GPS we determined that going down and back up equaled 0.8 of a mile. Last Saturday Michelle and I took our son and a picnic lunch to start training for elevation. We decided to make the round trip twelve times which is just short of a mile.

We did it and will continue to use pond to strengthen our knees over time. Our plan is to head over several evenings a week and keep using this as a training method.  Here is a better perspective showing Michelle coming back up.

 

 

At some point we will add our packs and keep on trucking Up & Down.