Two Saturdays ago, I completed a 2.9 mile lap around Green
Lake in the heart of Seattle’s northern neighborhoods for the first time. In the interim between this latest personal
best and the two-mile trek the week before, I had completed an incremental walk
of 2.5 miles, . . . just gradually increasing mileage with each walk. The good news is that from two miles to three
miles, it took the same amount of time, about 65 minutes, so my walking gate
continues to smooth, lengthen, quicken. The
Green Lake walk occurred on the Saturday after the presidential inauguration and this being Seattle a protest
run had started on the other side of the lake but in the opposite direction so
I ended up weaving through many hundreds of runners wearing pink knitted caps! On the following work-out day I increased the
number of flights of stairs from 16 to 24 by moving from two circuits of my
exercise routine to three circuits. Since
the Green Lake walk I’ve upped the distance to 3.2 miles, and soon it will make
sense to re-join a gym so that I can increase workout intensity using gym
equipment and weights.
I have been wanting to set more explicit goals for my recovery, and
so yesterday I built a spreadsheet showing three-day increments throughout 2017,
and starting at 0 miles, 0 minutes, 0 elevation gain, and 0 pack weight, and ending with 15
miles, 10 hrs, 6,000 ft elevation gain, and 50 lbs pack weight (an estimate of
what I’d need to be capable of to successfully climb the nearby volcanoes). As of the end of January, I am well ahead of
distance and time targets, but will need to start carrying weight (only 5 lbs
at this point) and begin taking on slight elevation gain, so I’ll be looking
for neighborhood streets with gentle elevation gain.
Back in 2012 I moved to Louisiana
for several years to take advantage of an interesting work assignment, and hence needed to get creative about staying in Mountaineering condition. While there, I joined Anytime Fitness and
used their facility twice weekly on weekdays and then hiked in the Tunica Hills (on the Louisiana / Mississippi border)
on the weekends in the fall, winter, and spring. In summertime, it was far too hot and humid
to work out in the hills and so I would do an especially long Anytime Fitness
workout on the weekends. During the
shoulder weekends of fall and spring (even with a pitch black 0400 start with
headlamp and hand-held torch) it would become so uncomfortably hot & humid that
after each lap I’d pull off my drenched and dripping shirt, underwear and socks
to ring out the sweat. So much sweat
would run down my legs and collect in my boots that is was as though I had walked
knee deep through a stream with my boots on.
The Tunica Hills exercise routine was closer to an intricate
cross-country obstacle course than a hike.
I would strap on a 50-pound pack and walk/jog three laps around the
five-mile circumference of The Thompson Creek Natural Area with enough hilly
ups & downs (some very steep requiring veggie belays) to be the equivalent
of 2,000 feet of elevation gain per lap.
Over the several years that I lived in Baton Rouge I made so many trips
around the course that I knew every turn in the path, every step and every
hand-hold. I kept track of time on my
trips, including measuring lap split times, and tested different strategies to
improve my speed and endurance. Also,
depending on the amount of rain the prior week and the temperature,
precipitation, and breeze forecast for the day of the workout, I could
anticipate whether I had a chance at setting a new personal best time.
The first attempt to complete the Tunica
Hills workout took over eight hours (route finding issues) and my final
personal best time was 5:48. On the day
of my final personal best, it hadn’t rained for a week so the trail was firm
and the creeks were low, and it was cool and breezy, so I could move very
quickly without overheating. The most
successful strategy for me turned out to be starting FAST and just trying to
hang on to that pace going forward. Taking
Ibuprofen beforehand contributed to taking at least 10 minutes off my total
time, as it reduced foot swelling, which reduced pain, resulting in less
distraction and better foot placements.
The Tunica Hills workout was always great fun with lots of
wildlife distractions along the way. Most
common were deer in the creek bottoms, armadillo rooting around in the leaves,
raccoons & possums sharing the trail, turtles, tortoises, and the occasional
flock of wild turkeys. Startling turkeys
always got my heart pumping because the entire flock would explode out of the
understory and into the air all at once.
Somewhat less common and worth keeping a close eye out for were the cotton
mouths and water moccasins, both goodly sized, aggressive & poisonous
snakes. Also, spicing things up a bit were
the seasonally reoccurring waives of mosquitoes, biting flies, ticks (thankfully
not carrying deer-tick disease, just an abundant nuisance), and (literally) huge
spider webs with palm sized banana spiders in their centers. These were the nephila clavipes of
North America (not phoneutria of South America). Although the varieties can be about the same size,
they have dramatically different appearances, behaviors, and habitats. The North
American type spins a web known for its incredible strength, and is shy and
fairly harmless. Walking / jogging into
one of these super webs prior to sun up definitely gave me the creeps (where’d that
spider go)! The South American kind travels
over the ground, hunts instead of making a web, is aggressive and has a
potentially lethal bite (thank goodness there were none of these).
Several weekends each year in early spring robins would visit
in great flocks carpeting the forest floor, and they would ripple outward from my
progress through the forest, a never ending flurry of wings. Next, the cicadas would make their appearance,
boring out of the dirt and working their way up the tree trunks to eventually emerge
from their shells and remain stock still allowing their wings to dry. Then in
the following weekends a seemingly infinite number of lightening bugs (fire
flies) would make the forest a magical place before sunrise. There was always something different to see / experience, including fantastically heavy rains and even the occasional snow fall!
Six hours of intense solitary workout in these abundantly verdant
& vibrantly alive surroundings provided fertile ground for introspection,
revelation, and creative imaginings.
Pretty certain I solved most of the world’s problems during these hikes! After the workout, back at the trailhead
parking lot, I’d pop open a frosty beverage and break into a bag of salty crunch
and as often as not would answer questions from other park visitors about just
what I was up to (training for Everest?!) because my boots, heavy pack, and
rapid pace were definitely not the norm.
Eventually I made the acquaintance of the park ranger and became his eyes
& ears on the park’s perimeter as he spent most of his time on the more
frequented common trails through the park’s interior. He asked for my mobile number and “deputized”
me as an unofficial on-call emergency support person (SAR-lite) in case someone
got lost or injured out there. On several occasions, I did redirect turned-around
hikers who had lost their way on the trail.
At this point in my recovery it is hard to imagine completing even one Tunica Hills
lap as the trail is so steep and convoluted.
In any case, it's nice to recollect. Of course, I could make it if I had to, . . . it’d just take forever!
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