Most recently updated January 6th, 2024
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
This is the 4th year in a row that I’ll spend 8 weeks training at the beginning of the year to get in shape for an awesome epic hike later on.
My last year’s training was for an epic 2 weeks of hiking in Greece, specifically hiking Mt Olympus, the Vikos Gorge and all over the island of Corfu.
The training did it’s job, and I didn’t have any issues with any of the hikes.
At this point, I don’t know yet what hike that will be for me this year. But it’s still a good idea to be ready to hit the trails by Spring time.
Last year, the NC General Assembly) designated 2023 to be “The Year of the Trail” in North Carolina, and if their goal was to promote more use of NC outdoor recreation resources – it was a success!
Last year both local and regional NC trails saw more traffic, especially from beginning hikers.
Now a year later, the trails will likely be even more popular – and populated! – especially in peak times.
It’s safe to say the shorter, easier, and easier-to-get-to beginner-level trails will likely be the most crowded.
All the more reason to train up early, so you can tackle the more ambitious trails when the easy ones are crowded!
The “8 Weeks to Awesome” hike training plan will help you do that, and you’ll be in great shape by Spring Break for any hike you want to do 🙂
The Holiday season is just now winding down, so this past week I started to focus on getting back to my usual pretty disciplined training routine.
That routine includes several hikes per week, and starting next week I’ll post the training hikes on my hiking Meetup, so you can hike with me!
And of course, there’s weight training and cardio each week, with stretching every day.
Over the next couple of weeks, along with more focused and increased physical training, I’ll also try to clean up my diet.
Over the holidays – which for me was a series of gatherings for the whole month of December and into January – I went kind of overboard with the cheese intake.
Holiday eating caused me to abandon my usual healthy eating habits, so now I’ve got to get strict with myself again.
Because of my asthma, I’ve adopted a “clean” diet ( you can read about my Anti-Asthma Diet here ) that focuses more on protein and veggies, and less on dairy, breads and grains.
Combined with intermittent fasting, this diet works pretty well for just about anyone, whether you’ve got asthma or not!
Luckily, I live within walking distance of a couple of different grocery stores, so for extra exercise I could walk to the store for smaller trips and carry groceries home in my back pack.
I’ve been very sick with chest/sinus congestion during this past Holiday season, and have been pretty much grounded from hiking.
No specific injury, just hard to breathe with all the buckets-o-snot, and very tired….
So this year, I’ll be training back up from the ground along with everybody else! (Please don’t hurt me…)
I made a checklist/tracker to help everyone measure their hike progress, available now on the IRW Merch Shop!
NEW: Track Your “Awesome” Progress at Home!
You’ll get instructions and three printable trackers:
-
- Your Hike Plan Worksheet
- Daily & Weekly Workouts
- Weekly Meals tracker
A download link in your confirmation email let’s you get started right away. Happy training! LJ
(Or, you could subscribe and download the pdf for FREE here.)
For your amusement and (I hope) to help with motivation, you can follow along with my journey in my weekly Training Logs. I’ll be adding them as I complete each week.
To see logs from this year and years past go to my Training Log.
You could also take a look at my 8 Weeks to Awesome Training Plan post, if you want to see what kind of training I’m doing.
Anyway, gotta go hork up a lung. Thanks for stopping by, see you next time! – LJ
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LJ has spent much of her free time as a single Mom – and now as an empty-nester – hiking in the US and around the world. She shares lessons learned from adventures both local and in exotic locations, and tips on how to be active with asthma, plus travel, gear, and hike planning advice for parents hiking with kids and beginners of all ages. Read more on the About page.