Lemme tell you about my hiking coach...

NOW let me tell you about my awesome coach, Regina Reiter. Last fall after completing the competitive swimming I intended to do for the year, I realized that having others to support me in my hiking would assist me in getting ready for this trip. So I planned a couple of hikes and sent emails out to about 50 of my closest friends and posted to my 1500 other closest friends on Facebook. One of my dear friends told me she would never go hiking (she is a dancer) and said I MUST meet her friend Regina. Yeah, yeah, so what… Finally, I called Regina and hired her to be my hiking coach. And she is awesome.
Firstly let me tell you about all her qualifications. She hiked the Appalachian Trail four years ago –completed the entire thing in seven months (over 2100 miles from GA to Maine). She works in the summer as a trail runner for the Forestry Service on the Appalachian Trail, too. She has also hiked the Pacific Crest Trail (2660 miles) , and of course has done the Foothills Trail (about 77 miles) and the Benton MacKaye Trail (about 288 miles) and the Superior Hiking Trail in Minnesota (275 miles). She has wilderness first aid training too. She is the mother of three adult sons and a naturalist who has taught at private schools, outdoor education centers and the like.
Secondly, she is patient, kind, funny, and willing to go at my pace. She encourages and prods, and is complementary and helpful. She makes me reframe things when I get into a disempowering context – like when I had hiked 7.5 miles on more difficult terrain than ever with a heavier pack and was disappointed because I could not make it all the way to the waterfall. I stayed in the disappointment, and she was in the acknowledgment of my accomplishments. I can now tell the difference between Mountain Laurel and Rhododendron. And the food – oh my God, the food… She prepares incredible lunches, including hiker’s pizza made with dehydrated tomato sauce rehydrated on the trail, sandwich rounds, lentil sprouts, and nutritional yeast. Yummy. And once we had sweet potatoes on the trail – dehydrated sweet potatoes rehydrated with hot water (heated on the trail with her little stove) and walnuts. You get the picture. She has successfully found places for us to spend the night at very reasonable rates ($20/night at the most recent – includes kitchen priviledges, too), so I don’t have to sleep on the ground. She is designing hikes that will train me for this trip and others beyond. And has connected me with the Benton MacKaye Trail Association (I’m a member now) and the Trail Dames Meetup Group. She also started a meetup group just for my training (Mary Hikes Kennesaw) and I have met lots of other cool people. I tell you, this gal rocks. If you know of anyone looking for a hiking coach, this is the person to hire for sure.

New update

Life is certainly happening and although I have not blogged any in a long time, that does not mean that I am not consistently, persistently working toward going hiking in August with Scott. There has been a lot to manage – the issue with my feet persisted even though I have super boots, I have gotten computer designed insoles for my feet from Foot Solutions, and I have been training.
Last spring on a whim, I competed in the Cobb Senior Games in several swimming events and won gold in all of them – 50 and 100 yard breast, back and freestyle races. I was recruited into the largest Masters swim team in Georgia – the Killer Whales, and went on to compete in events at the University of Georgia in June, the Georgia Games short course, and outside 1 K, winning many races. Who knew? Competitive swimming was not something that I thought I could ever do. I competed at Auburn University Nationals in August and came in 5th and 6th in the 400 and 800 meter freestyle and third in the 200 meter breast stroke. It was fun and rewarding, AND after the August 2011 meet, I began to focus again on the hiking.
My full time job is with a small agency that started offering health insurance last fall. It took few months to get an appointment with someone regarding my feet, but finally saw a neurologist in January. She did a couple of tests and found that the nerve in both legs that services the muscle that points the toe is compromised. She later estimated that the damage is 20-50%. She also tested the muscle and indicated that if the muscle had atrophied, then the nerve damage began a long time ago. It had. She was surprised that I had few problems with balance and that I had not had more problems with my feet than I had and attributed my continued use to my being an athlete. Never thought of myself as an athlete before.
In a subsequent visit, we discussed what options might be available. She said that she could order an MRI, but didn’t think it was necessary now, because it is probably just a disc in my back that has caused some damage. She said she would order it anyway and I could decide if I wanted to have that done. She agreed that physical therapy would be a good idea, as there might be some postures or exercises that would assist in keeping my back in place that would prevent the nerves from being pinched. She ordered more blood tests to check for any other flags of possible diseases that might have caused the nerve issue.
After the January appointment I had begun having sciatica, and I had not had that recently. Regular chiropractic did not seem to be helping, so I was concerned that the pain might be caused by something else. So, I thought the MRI might be a good idea until I found out it would cost me over $1000 to have it done. Those of you who are reading this who know me know that I have usually looked to alternative ways of healing when issues have come up. Indeed, there are many medical issues that have been diagnosed that seem to have disappeared. Soo, I started looking for different ways of looking at this issue.
I went to an energy healer that one friend recommended. Among other things, he told me to throw the hiking boots and insoles away and go barefooted. When I told him I was not going to do that, he recommended I read the book Born to Run and buy the funny shoes with toes. I did that within the week. The book is a great read and gave a great story and good information about the evolution of man and some things scientists may have been missing about what we humans were designed to do. And one of the surprising statistics was that since the design of the super running shoes, there has been an exponential increase in foot, knee, and leg injuries. It seems that what we are doing is compounding the problem, not solving it.
When I got the Foot Solutions insoles at the beginning of last summer, I started wearing the hiking boots or new tennis shoes with the insoles in them almost every day. Then I found that shoes that I could wear before I started wearing the super insoles, I could not wear at all. It was as if my feet were becoming weaker because of the extra support they were getting. So, I started trying the funny shoes with toes. I noticed immediately that I did not seem to need hiking poles as much – my balance with the new shoes was much better than before. Also, different parts of my feet and legs were being used now, and it was clear that these were muscles that had not been used before.
I would hike some in the funny shoes, and then sometimes change shoes (and socks) on the trail. I noticed within two weeks of wearing the funny shoes that I could wear heals where I had not been able to do that for some years. My feet were getting stronger. It is clear to me now that the reason I could not wear heals was because of the balance issue. My back would try to compensate and be in strain while wearing heals because of the lack of muscles to keep me upright. I also noticed that when I used the hiking boots with the special insoles that my feet hurt worse.
So I am now alternating between hiking with the funny toe shoes and have gone back to the regular insoles in my Keen’s. I still have trouble with the muscles – after a few miles, the muscle just goes numb and I get a burning sensation in the ball of my feet going to the second and third toe. When it gets too bad, I stop on the trail and prop my feet up. Then I go on. What there is to do is train.

Len Foote Hike Inn

What a fabulous weekend. A five mile hike in the north Georgia mountains to the Len Foote Hike Inn, two nights of being in the mountains in a hiker's paradise, and then hiking out today with a meetup group - The Sky's the Limit. Initially, it did matter to me that the weather was calling for rain, possible thunder storms and cooler weather. And two weeks before I had injured my knee on a training hike on Kennesaw Mountain. I debated whether to go or not, fearing that I would be a strain on a group of people I did not know, and suspecting correctly that I would be the oldest participant.The Thursday before the hike on Saturday, I did a practice hike on Kennesaw Mt, (not as strenuous as the one I had injured myself on two weeks before. After that hike the knee didn't feel great, but didn't hurt any worse, so I figured I would just put up with it. As it turned out, my knee felt better Sunday after the hike in!

Looking over my most recent entry into this blog, I realize it has been October since I last made and entry. Much has happened, and my training for this trip to Scotland has been seemingly in stagnation. The December trip Scot and I planned to make of the Len Foote Hike Inn Loop did not occur. The weather report for that day was heavy rain, and I had no rain gear at the time, so we postponed,and set the date for February 13. The week before that date, I was in bed with the flu for two days, had not trained much in the weeks before, and knew that doing a more strenuous hike in the mountains was just not happening. So we changed the location to a shorter, easier hike at Sweetwater Creek State Park, and BJ and Buffy joined us. It was just delightful having my Atlanta family with me. Then since then, I finally started training for this hike in, and pulled something in my knee, having to cancel another hike I had planned with another group.

FINALLY I have a sense of a major accomplishment with this hiking thing. I had no idea what training for this trip would look like or how I would ever get there. Looking at how far I have come in the last year is massive, and looking for what else and the additional training I will need to be able to hike 8-12 miles every day for 5 days will look like. Scott and I have planned to postpone the trip to August of 2012, so I have another year to train than we initially planned.

Also, in other developments, my job is going better, and I have a part time job that fits in with the full time one. My finances are starting to look more promising regarding having the money for this trip as well.

TEN MILES!!!!! YIPPEE!!!!

Tim was right. Don't go for strength and endurance at the same time during the early training. Pick one or the other. For the last several weeks I have hiked Stone Mountain and Kennesaw Mountain - the actual mountain trails. Today I had intended to hike the mountain trail and add the loop to Dallas Highway. Instead, I parked at Cheatham Hill and hiked the 5.5 miles of that loop and then crossing over Dallas Hwy, hiked to Burnt Hickory. Nice rolling trails, but nothing as strenuous as the mountain. Sooo, I completed the 10 miles. Ten miles in one day was a goal for me this month. YEA! It is great to meet a goal. It took me four hours and 20 minutes. Tim, my awesome chiropractor does advise me well.

After my most recent hiking struggles, Scott and I have decided to do the Lenfoot Hikein trail in one day as our first hike together, and it is scheduled for December 19th. We had planned earlier to do Springer, or do to Lenfoot Hikein and spend two nights, making the sprint to Springer on the full day. Scaling our first hike together to a less strenuous hike is a good thing. I am beginning to have my doubts of whether I can do that this soon, but it is six weeks away, so maybe I can make it. For that trip I plan to swim on Thursday night before we hike on Saturday. I swam last night and was sore today before I started. With my working schedule and some increased social activities (Thanks, Larry...:-)) I haven't been swimming as much either. But life is good.

The marker at Cheatham Hill reads that 3,000 Union soldiers and close to 1,000 Confederate soldiers died there. That is absolutely incredible. War - what is it good for? My dear friend Larry, political science professor and military historian and I were discussing this only a couple of days ago. He suggested that perhaps if we reinstituted the draft we would be more careful of the wars we sent out children out to fight.

At the Illinois Monument I paused and spoke to three people, one who evidently was a historian of the Civil War, and he was discussing how bad the Union POW camps were such to be defensive of how bad the ones in the south were. I commented that a discussion of which was the least horrendous was pointless. My great-grandfather fought for the south (he was from Virgina) and he was a POW in Maryland. We have letters that were sent to him as a reply to letters he sent to a cousin in New York requesting a winter coat. The cousin remembered my great-great-grand mother (his mother) fondly and sent him one. I commented to the three people that the war was sometimes brother against brother, family against family. At what point are we willing to make our love for each other more important than our view? There must be a better way.

Something else I reflected on when I was hiking today. There are many people who were walking or running the trails today who were looking down. There are some times when looking at where you are going in the short term is important. There are rocks and roots, and uneven places where looking down is important to prevent you from tripping. It did not seem that some people were looking up for any reason. They didn't look up to speak or notice anyone else. The trees and sky were gorgeous today, and the critters were abundant. I started noticing how much I look down when I don't have to. And then I noticed how I can make the similar analogy to life. We get in our groove and keep the "nose to the grindstone." Not that it isn't important to be mindful of the step we are taking in the instant. However, looking up and being present to what is ahead in the longer term, and being present to the day provides something. I'm just musing again...

5.5 miles two days in a row, and the mountain to boot

Epson Salts and the mechanical bubble machine for my tub only marginally helped the sore muscles. Maybe I did not drink enough water during and after Saturday's hike. Perhaps it was because these were the first hikes using a day pack (and I added a quart of water). Could be because I was actually hiking Kennesaw Mountain (1000 foot rise over one mile) instead of some of the lesser trails. However, if the old saying, "no pain, no gain" is accurate, I gained a LOT this weekend in my training. And I am still very sore this morning.

Scott came over one day last week and we were talking about what was next for me to work toward. He had said that once I did 10 miles in a day that we would do Springer Mountain, the approach to the Appalachian Trail from Amacola Falls. We researched and found that a really good weekend would be to spend two nights at the Lynnfoot Hike Inn. That would mean a 5 mile hike on Friday and Sunday and the sprint to Springer on Saturday. We can do the weekend for the two of us for $400, so that is something else to put into the budget. That trip sounded doable last Wednesday. Today I am not so sure. To train for Springer means that rather than do the loop trail at Kennesaw Mountain which is what I did for the last two days, to do just the mountain up and down a few times. Right now I am not inspired.

I might feel better if I went to swim before I go to work, but not sure I can make it. Theresa has promised a massage soon in payment for my feeding her cats lots this summer when she has been out of town. This will be a REALLY good week to have that.

6 miles!!!!

Geez. I thought I was bad when I had not posted in three weeks and now I notice it has been over two months. Scott actually posted on my Facebook wall if I was still training. Guess all y'all thought I had given up. Well, no... there was more to address and put into place. There are other events and circumstances in my life that do not include training for this trip.

Firstly is my new job. Well, not new now. My probationary period ends this week and there has been much to do and be and address to be comfortable with what I am doing. One hundred or so hours of online coursework, learning to do BIRP notes (and if you don't know what they are, that's ok - you may not want to know, but it is through those notes that I get paid). I completed the online courses a couple of weeks ago, and my notes are coming together better as well. The weekends I was focusing on completing the online courses I was not mindful of my posture while sitting in a comfy chair with my laptop. The result was back problems and more stuff to manage and deal with. NOW, all that is complete and handled. Check!

I was still having problems with my feet until last Monday night I had reflexology from my dear friend Wanda Nelson. She does feet. If you have anything wrong with your feet, call Wanda (contact me personally for contact info). She said that I have hammer toe on both feet (second toe is longer, becoming permanently bent and pushed back into the foot.) That is why the joint is inflamed. She suggested yoga toes (yeah, I didn't know what she was talking about either). What I found was some gell thingies at CVS Pharmacy that are similar. They keep your toes apart similarily to the foam toe separators you get when having a pedicure. My feet are better already. I hiked 6 miles today and it feels good.

My weekly hikes have also included Stone Mountain. My late Wednesday afternoon staff meeting had me completing around 6pm. The attempt to get to Marietta from Stone Mountain at six is just silly - you can't get here from there. So, I took my hiking boots and change of clothes and hiked the mountain. That worked until last Wednesday. I fell twice-the last time because it was dark and I stepped in a hole and turned my ankle over. Thank God for strong ankles (all the swimming helps) and great boots (REI and Keen) and hiking poles. The first time I fell was from overextending the ability of my boots to hold me on a steep incline to rocks with sand on them. The sand did it. The boots have held at incredible inclines before - the experience I have is of the boots having little suction cups on the soles. Great equipment. The experience only made me a bit sore the next morning. I was able to find some Advil that had not expired and forgot that I hurt until the next day!

Trips have also taken precedent sometimes. A High School reunion in Virginia gave me a few days with old friends and family in August. Next year will mark 45 years since I graduated from high school and I have mentioned to a couple of classmates about hosting our reunion on my family farm. Last weekend I successfully created an overnight at Lake Lanier just north of Atlanta with friends. Rustic cabin and pontoon boat's engine did not work, but we were able to dive off and swim in deep water and canoe, cook out and shoot fireworks. We also blew up some automobile airbags. They are loud, just so you know... In October I plan a trip to the NC mountains to see my dear friend Jim and am exploring going to Colorado to see Heather and family and other friends around Thanksgiving.

Ok, ok... I know this blog is about my hiking training... so here are the goals for the next two months: By the end of October I intend to have hiked 10 miles in one day. By the end of November I intend to have hiked 10 miles two days in a row. This is doable.

New Boots and Breakthroughs!

It has been almost three weeks since my last entry. When I am having challenges, I don't want to tell anyone. I will willingly share after I figure it out and have the breakthrough. It is all about "looking good" and not wanting to admit to anyone that there is anything I cannot figure out by myself. Being vulnerable scares me.

So, here are the breakthroughs: I have new hiking boots, and started building up my distance again. My left foot was still having this issue - seemingly around the joint in the main part of the foot attached to the second toe. At my monthly visit this past week with chiropractor Dr. David Lee, he listened attentively at my complaint and then said, "Now, Mary, we will find out what is REALLY going on." He proceeded to muscle test the different organs in my body and my spleen went weak. He continued, "Mary, do you know the emotional issue attached to the spleen?" Nope. "Self esteem," he said, "You got something going on about your confidence in actually being able to do this hiking trip, don't you?" I immediately felt the emotion come up. Yep, something to address. He continued to adjust and used his vibrating tool on the side of my leg and my foot (the one that hurts like hell until you quit tensing and just relax) and it started immediately feeling better. "Knowing the personal self development work you do, just knowing the source of your foot pain may give you the tools you need to deal with this," he said, "but if you need some assistance, let me know."

Okey dokey! One more issue addressed.

AND I have a new job! The company I am working with contracts with Medicaid to provide services for clients with a mental health diagnosis. My job is in address the vocational rehabilitation aspects and assist with housing for our clients. These folks are not appropriate for regular vocational rehabilitation services. Some are stable enough to work a few hours a week with some support from us. I will be advocating for our clients with businesses close to where they live. This week I have been looking for subsidized independent housing for them as well. The job is proving to be fun, frustrating, exciting, rewarding, overwhelming, and more - down in the trenches social work - just the kind of job for me!! This new employment will give me the opportunity to get my finances in order and have the money to take the trip!!! YIPPEE!! Life is good.

I hiked the loop of Burnt Hickory to Dallas Hwy this morning - 3.7 miles. Feet good. Legs good. Knees good. Lungs good. Back on schedule. I think with my work schedule and my hiking mostly on weekends now, the way I will increase my distance is to hike twice on Saturdays - morning and late afternoons.