Date: 2011-02-16
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Miles today: 0.0

So I updated the refrigerator calendar today and it struck me, I'll be on the trail in less than a month. It's both exciting and unsettling at the same time. The hamstring seems to be a little better but I still feel it with certain activities. I've stretched it, tried aquatherapy, and now a foam roller, all seem to help but it's still there. The good news is that when I hike on it it loosens up and feels pretty good. So I plan on just starting and trying to keep up with my stretching the best I can.A couple of days ago I decided to take my pack out for a walk, but this time I decided I would put all items that I intend to carry in it. (Normally I don't bring my sleeping bag and my down jacket because I don't like to leave them in their stuff sacks. I just compensate with a couple of extra liters of water.) So I pack everything up and it looks good, but there really isn't a lot of capacity left in the pack. The problem is even though I have my food bag in there I don't have any food in it, so when it's filled I'm not sure how I'll get it in. I tried rearranging items, putting the tent on the outside but neither really worked because it made the pack ride poorly. I decided I'll deal with that when it's time to actually put food in it because I know when it's crunch time I'll make it happen. On a better note, when I weighed the pack it came in at 33lb. This is heavier than I would like but I have quite a bit of cold weather gear inside which will be sent home once the weather turns warmer. I'm used to NH winters so I know what I need to stay warm here, and it seems as if the southern mountains can duplicate home so I think I'll carry what I have until I have more firsthand experience. (That pack weight does include extra water weight to compensate for the lack of food).Most days my wife and I have been making the loop out behind our house on snowshoes. It should be noted that we have been having a good winter with frequent snow and not much thawing so snowshoes are a must for a woods walk. Recently though we got some mild weather and even a little rain before it turned cold again, this had the effect of turning our beautiful snowshoe trail into a crunchy, hardpacked trench. Not really the most enjoyable for snowshoeing, so we switched to just hiking boots with much better results. Today as we went around we took the gps and found the loop to be 2.5 miles with about 450ft of elevation gain. (450ft is just the difference between the house and the top of the hill; we actually go up and down 100ft to 150ft several times in the course of the walk.) What I did realize from this is that in the next couple of weeks I need to be doing the loop 2-3 times at once. It takes about an hour to complete a loop with my pack on, so three loops should be pretty good training.It's really starting to hit home now just how close it is. I've already seen several hiker journaling and it makes me realize I'll be joining them in a few short weeks. Thanks to everyone that has signed my guest book, I appreciate you taking the time and I hope to meet up with some of those that will be starting around the same time as me. Until then I've got a month to get in better shape and finish all those projects that keep creeping up. At least it feels good to know I have next year's wood done.Alan