A hiking we will go!

Name: Point Reyes Hike
Date: July 18. 2009
Distance: 8.90 miles
Elapsed Time: 4:22:05
Avg. Speed: 2.0 mph
Max Speed: 9.9 mph
View in Google Maps
created using MotionX-GPS on the iPhone

It lost a little data in the trees at the beginning, so there's a large chunk missing from the trail - but i changed where I was carrying my phone, and it did a lot better.

This was a truly glorious day. The weather was absolutely perfect - the fog stayed at bay for all but about 20 minutes of the hike, at which point a little coolness was extremely welcome. And I felt STRONG. When we left the house we thought we would probably do a 6 or 7 mile hike. We thought that was all Daniel's mom would feel up to. But she was feeling great, and really wanted to try something closer to 9 miles. At fist I was just totally mentally unprepared for that, but we stopped and got some snacks for the trail, and got on our way.

The trail we chose started with a massive climb that just went up and up and up and up - seemingly forever. A year ago, it would have left me winded and tired. I was barely breathing heavily by the time we got to the top. My legs didn't feel leaden, either. For the first third of itor so I was right on Daniel's heels, and he's always been a strong hiker (he's got those long legs ;-) ). Daniel's mom was sort of struggling along, one step at a time in the back, much like I used to do, and I felt bad about leaving her behind, so I dropped back to keep her company, but it felt good to really stretch my legs - feel my muscles happily chugging along to propel me forward - for that little bit.

Last year, when I'd been doing crossfit for only a few months, I felt like I'd made large gains in my fitness, but when I went out to go hiking or biking, it didn't really translate - those activities were still pretty damn hard. So it was really nice to finally see my CrossFit fitness actually translate into a separate sport.

I definitely did start to get foot sore around mile 5, and my legs started getting really tight, but I found that stopping and stretching them out helped me to get a fresh burst of energy, and to feel less run down. And I never really hit that plodding - just put one foot in front of the next - state.

I was definitely ready to take my shoes off when it was done, and I was pretty stiff legged for the rest of the day, but it was a fantastic hike.