What do you do if you’re used to Sunday hikes of 2-3 miles, and you suddenly are faced with the prospect of hiking 15 miles a day for 4 straight days?
In mid-April of 2016, with around 10 weeks to go before the hike, Bethany and I started to increase the length and frequency of our (at that time relatively infrequent) weekend hikes. By the way, I accept all responsibility for their usual infrequency; somehow I always seem to have weekend projects going on that keep me otherwise occupied. After all, building drones and repairing motorcycles are clearly far more important than cardiovascular exercise … In any case, our outings to Sleeping Giant State Park began to be extended, to include hikes of 4 and even up to 5 miles.
In early May, we began walking in to work in the mornings, once or twice a week. We live in Hamden, CT, a little over 7 miles from downtown New Haven where we work. Since we fairly soon started to add an occasional return journey at the end of the day, this meant we were covering around 14-15 miles on a good day. For days where time – or energy – was short at the end of the day, there was always the J bus, which runs down Whitney Avenue all the way from downtown to Hamden, with a handy bus stop right at the end of our road.
Usually if we went hiking on the weekends, we would wear Lands End sneakers that we’d had since our Grand Canyon trip in 2008. They were sturdy, relatively comfortable, and had great grip for scrambling up canyon walls etc. However, the first time I wore mine for a hike of more than 10 miles, I started having pretty severe pain in the soles of both feet, just a little back from the toes. A search on Google suggested that this was most likely “metatarsalgia”, which can be quite painful but can be avoided by using shoes with proper support and padding where it is needed.
So Bethany and I paid a visit to Hawley Lane shoes in Orange. This is a store that has figured out how to stay alive in an Amazon-dominated world: the secret is, provide excellent customer service. Salesperson Rebecca spent over an hour with us (and sent us a postcard later to thank us for our business); Bethany walked out of the store with a new pair of Merrell hiking boots, and I am now the proud owner of a pair of New Balance sneakers that cost over three times as much as any other sneakers I have ever owned – but they feel GREAT. Happy feet!
Other health-related considerations: after a motorcycle accident last summer that left me with 8 broken ribs and a collarbone in four pieces, I tend to have more aches and pains 
than I used to. My collarbone is now held together with two metal plates and a bunch of screws, and is still somewhat tender at times, which makes wearing a backpack a little uncomfortable. I thought I had found the perfect answer when I bought a Yukon Outfitters Overwatch sling backpack with only one shoulder strap, on the right – my collarbone was broken on the left side. However I quickly learned that the off-center weight of a sling backpack is actually pretty hard on the lower back — I ended up with worse pain than b
efore. So I’m just going to have to deal with any collarbone discomfort. Additionally, one of those broken ribs has (apparently) healed a little crooked, and after long hikes I tend to start getting pains in that area due to the muscle rubbing over the rough spot on the bone. Not much I can do about that; I will carry lots of Ibuprofen and hope that it doesn’t cause too much trouble! 🙂
