Sundays in the Park

Last week, this week and for the foreseeable future I've blocked out a maximum of 3 hours at Ridley Creek State Park. I love this park.  You've heard me see that before. RCSP is close enough to my house that I can aim for a 9 am start - allowing me at least one day to sleep in - and be back home and cleaned up by 1:00 p.m. Plenty of time to enjoy Sunday. The trails are challenging enough to get in a good workout and peaceful enough to provide a true recovery from Saturday's longer hikes. I feel really lucky to have this gem so close to me.

I hope to encourage more fitness buddies to join me. Last week Sara was there. She's running  a half marathon in Bucks County today and training for the Goofy Challenge so I don't expect to see her hiking as much between now and then. Today I was by myself. I left from area #16 and completed 5.25 miles on the White and Blue trails. I even ran a little of the trails today. It felt good. I saw a few runners; a couple of dogs (all leashed); a turtle and a lot of sunshine peeking through the trees.

Today's peacefulness completely wiped away the ugliness of yesterday's long hike.  I'll spare you a detailed account because it will likely just sound awfully whiny. The bullet point review is this:

• Tired
• Under-hydrated going into it (although did well during)
• Woke up to serious allergy face
• Being backed up to a tree by an unleashed german shepherd whose owner tried to tell me it was my fault for being afraid of the dog.
• Trying to back track on a trail that I swear behaved like the stairs at Hogwarts - changing direction at will. 
• Finishing the last 1.5 miles in a downpour. 

The upside? I did get out and do it. I finished 6.25 hours of the planned 7 hours. Despite lots of stops to regroup my overall pace was good. Those things totally make up for the frustrations of the hike.

SSH 2015 is scheduled for September 12, 2015. Registration opens February 1st! I have a lot of work to do between now and then. Specifically more, steeper climbing. But I will be there. :)

Keep smiling and keep moving.
-Paula

The One Where We Gain Some Appreciation for PennDot.

When our Labor Day Road Trip started (I'm a little behind in my blogging) I thought the title of this post would be "George Washington Really Did Sleep Here". We drove to Harper's Ferry, W.Va and began to follow the Washington Heritage Trail. "The footsteps of America’s first president are particularly prominent and inspired creation of the 136-mile National Scenic Byway," is one sentence used to describe the trail. Sounds right up our alley.

This has to be the most poorly signed trail ever. The map provided by the website and one we picked up at the visitor center at Harper's Ferry were only vague approximations of which roads the trail followed and the on road "By Way" signs were often just plain wrong. We could find no rhyme, reason or excuse for many of them. In addition, West Virginia has a very peculiar way of telling you what route you are on. I can't even begin to tell you how it works (or doesn't work).

We saw this sign in Berkeley Springs on day two of the trip. It is perfect for the way this route is mapped and we totally understood why the residents of Cornelius Avenue were frustrated. Interesting thing is we never resorted to GPS during the trip. We had the maps of the trail and a road map of West Virginia from AAA. I think the historic nature of the route we were on put GPS out of our minds. Based on this sign it would not have helped anyway.

Despite the detours and turn arounds we had a great time as we usually do on our road trips. Oh and we saw two permanent street named Detour Road in two different states on this trip.

Here is a link to photos from the trip.

Break's Over

After ten days vacation with Dave entertaining our soon to be 12 years old grandson and a total of about 2 weeks off hiking I'm back.

I biked briefly on Monday. Very briefly but enough to get my blood moving. I hiked with Sara on Wednesday at Misery and Joy, biked about an hour on Thursday and today I met Sara and Michael at Heinz Refuge. I hiked they ran. When I arrived there just  before 8 am I realized that I had never been there in Summer before. My previous visits were in late winter or early spring. The vegetation growth and color of all the flowers was startling! Fortunately the paths were clear. I completed 9 miles. And because it was so flat I was done in less than 3 hours despite lots of stops to enjoy the views.

I wore my new pack today. I didn't that much water or cargo space for 3 hours but I wanted to get the feel of it. It fits me perfectly! The only negative reviews I could find on this pack mentioned chafing on the neck. I did not have any of that. Not even a light rub. I seem to have the perfect torso length for it. It was very comfortable. I tried it in different spots on my back just to see and felt good all around.

I did have a little bit of tension across my back just below my shoulders. I attribute a little of this to carrying double the water weight and a little to being away from hiking for so long - not carrying anything on my back. However, the undeniable truth is that I have a upper body and core. I need to commit to more work there.

The hike itself was uneventful. My legs and feet held up fine despite the lay off. I was a little uncomfortable at the end but I think that's because of the lack of climbing. I've noticed that I do better when there are hills mixed in. Who'd a thunk it, huh?

Tonight I'm meeting the group for ice cream miles at Peace Valley Park. :)

New Hydration Pack

My new hydration pack arrived! It will hold twice as much water and has enough storage space to accommodate a full day hike without having to hike circles around a home base or pre-determined stops. I'm excited to try it out.

It's funny how these things work, though. The package was waiting on our doorstep when I arrived home after Sunday's 11 mile AT hike. Until that hike I was still debating whether I really needed the bigger pack. Even though I had thought about it for weeks and researched the heck out of the idea before ordering it, I was still going back and forth regularly on keeping it vs returning it. But Sunday's hike helped me realize it was a good investment after all.

Sunday's hike was shorter than Saturday's. Yet I took in the same volume of water and food. In fact, it would have been nice to have an additional something to eat on Sunday but I was carrying all that I could manage. The climbing and those darn boulders took more out of me than my previous outings. And had it been a typical hot August day I would have been in trouble.

My hesitance about keeping the larger pack was mostly me wondering how often I would actually need an all day pack. Sunday showed me that I could use the larger size even for a shorter day. It will be nice to have the ability to shed layers and store them in the fall and spring too.

I'm looking forward to trying it out. I could find no bad reviews of it online - and tried hard to find one. It will be heavier I'm sure but that comes with the territory. Here is a link to the Camelback Helena 22 at REI.com. I didn't order it from REI but this page has the most detail. Scroll down for more. 

Mine is purple. 

Keep smiling and keep moving

-Paula

Used But Not Abused

Today's hike was shorter than yesterday's but in many ways more strenuous. Yet I feel way better. I'm convinced now that yesterday's struggles were in large part due to the lack of activity between weekends.

I can feel today's hike for sure but I feel used but not abused. My legs and feet are buzzing not sore. Here's why -

This was a section of trail rocks/boulders we had to climb down. Now take that photo rotate it 90 degrees away so that the boulders are in a horizontal line. That's what the trail was like for almost all of  miles 2-7. Every now and then there was a smoother part that look liked this

and a few real teasers that looked like this

but for most of that five mile stretch it was all boulder hopping all the time. I fell only once. I had several arm flailing saves but I only fell once. :)

After the boulder fields we had four miles to go and it was more or less boulder free but rocky. However, after the boulders the rocky stretch felt like sponges to our feet. This is evident in miles 8,9,10 and 11 where our pace got progressively quicker. (Garmin info here)

Take a look at the elevation chart for this hike. Go ahead I'll wait. :) Yeah, see that? About 1000 feet in 2.5 miles and we pretty much kept moving the whole way. A brief stop at 2 miles to make sure everyone was still with us (there were 9 of us) but really only enough for the hike leader to count heads. No one wanted to lose momentum.

A couple of the people on this hike have done the Super Hike and they say it's steeper and more repetitive ups and downs. But that's ok. I'm gonna be ready. I was sweating on that climb today and my heart was going harder than it does on climbs around here but my legs did great and I recovered pretty quick at the top. I've got a lot of work to do, I know, but I'm feeling good about my progress.

Those boulders though.... I suck at boulder hopping.....but I did great everywhere else - and I climbed better than most in our group. Not bad for an old lady dork! :)

In two days I've gone 27+ miles in 10+ hours. I'm really surprised at how good I feel. I expected to be sore and exhausted. I did a lot of stretching yesterday. It really does help. My plan is to get out Tuesday and Wednesday for some hiking locally but then I'm off for 14 days while we take our 11 year old, soon to be 12 year old, grandson** Dawson all around the area and then-some. I'll be on my feet a fair amount but it won't be the same. In fact, in some ways stand around, move some and wait is harder.

Keep smiling and keep moving.

** Just to be clear, while I am old enough to be a grandmother I'm not really old enough to be Dawson's. I was 15 when his mother was born. Second marriages do strange things to the family tree. That being said, I'm looking forward to his visit.