Training Update: Gearing Up For Ultra #1
Happy New Year! It’s time for me to get ready for my first Ultra Hike on the 27th January!
Since my last post on Long Distance Walking in an Age of Distraction, I’ve completed just one further hike. We then entered the Christmas holidays and I was spending time with my kids and family - there just wasn’t time for me to take a full day out to do a hike.
I’m also now finishing off all my assessments for my first semester at Uni - due date 15th January! So no hiking for me for another week.
Final Hike of 2023
My final training hike for 2023 saw me achieving 16 miles (almost 26km). My route took me across fields and marked paths from Mundesley to Overstrand, where I stopped for my designated coffee and sandwich and then I took the slightly shorter route along the coast path back to Mundesley.
I must work out how to share a mapped route, unfortunately my old smart watch gave up on me after 7km so I can’t even screenshot my Strava for you!
It was a grey and miserable day, very windy and the ground was boggy and swampy everywhere. Honestly the most miserable hike I’ve done thus far in my training. And of course with that distance my body was seriously complaining by the end. I personally feel it in my hips, but I also noticed that my feet hurt and I think I’ll invest in some insoles for my boots to provide some cushioning.
I did discuss insoles with the salesman when I bought my boots but opted to wait and see how I held up without them, but these longer distances are proving that they would help me quite a bit.
Training Hike 7
Before I head off to London to do my first Ultra Hike, I am planning on fitting in at least one more training hike.
The London Hike is 42km and I’d like to bridge the gap between the 26km I’ve done so far and the full 42km so I’m going to aim for a 35km hike. If I can fit in another one before then I will.
It’s not all hiking though!
Up until Christmas I was also doing weight training a couple of times a week, although I’ve decided to quit the gym as I’ve really found a love of running.
I honestly never thought I would say that!
From my first Park Run :)
I’m now running 3 or 4 times a week and that doesn’t leave much time for the gym around my other responsibilities so it’s no longer worth the money for me to be a member. I will say, without having joined the gym in September, I probably wouldn’t have started running as it was through doing my “end of weight session cardio” that I started to do a beginner to 5k plan on the treadmill and something clicked. I’m going to do a full blog post about my running journey and what my goals are for that so I won’t go in to too much detail here.
The point of that is though, I’m building up my overall fitness with running, and that feeds in to my hiking fitness. It’s also easier to fit running in to my week than hikes as I tend to run (at the moment) for up to an hour, where hikes are now 5+ hour endeavours.
With all this running and hiking, my body is getting stiff and as I write this, I’m suffering with my first back injury - I think I strained the muscles whilst running in the cold. So I’m trying to increase my yoga sessions from 1 per week to 3.
And well there we are! This is how I’m building up to my first Ultra, the shortest of the 7 but no less of a challenge as it’s my first one!
I’d be very grateful for any donations towards this mammoth challenge I am taking on. You can donate through my Go Fund Me.
