[at-l] Hoplite's recovery time...

[lpark at uvm.edu (Logan Park)]

How'd I come to be sore?  Hmmm...  The last month or so of the hike was 
when it went from being stiff in the first and last ten minutes of the 
day to "ow! I need to really lean on my poles bigtime on these 
downhills!"  I can't trace that to a specific stumble or fall or 
anything.  If I had to speculate, I'd say it was because I'd been 
pushing the whole time so that I could finish in 5 months.  The decision 
to finish in 5 was a tough call to follow through on; I realized in the 
first month that I'd have to haul a lot faster than I'd like to.  It 
turned very many of my days from a nice amble to "let's go powerhiking 
up and down these mountains!"

As I said a number of times in my journal, given the choice, I'd do the 
trail in 7 months and traipse along quite slowly.  I had a sad moment 
sitting on one of the peaks in Maine for the sheer joy in just sitting 
on the peak of a mountain on a nice day and "wasting" the time.  The 
sadness came when I realized it had been a long time (weeks) since I'd 
done that.  That sucked awfully.  But I had made a decision to finish 
the trail in one year before school started no matter what-- it was (and 
still is) very important to me that I proved myself to me on that 
trail.  I like the person I am now a whole lot better than the person I 
used to be pre-trail. 

To you thruhiker 2005 hopefuls, SLOW DOWN on your hike.  Take longer 
than I did.  =) 

So there's a long and unfocused answer to a good question, Sloe-to-the-Toe.

HopLite


Sloetoe wrote:

>### First off, how'd you come to be sore? Diagnosing the cause
>accurately would go a long way toward better aiming the cure.
>
>And I don't think it was your hike that necessarily made you
>sore. I observed you (and the others we were with) there in that
>"last State" and at the end of your hike, you were well-fed
>(well, at least 'not gaunt'!), you were not hiking hugely-long
>miles (25-30s stacked up, etc), and you did not appear to be
>harboring bodily harmful habits.
>  
>