Aconcagua Training - Week One

From my awesome Kilimanjaro trip, I learned a lot about myself since I had seven days of relatively slow hiking to ponder. I'm in the process of adjusting my workout based on my observations, but the coolest thing is I came back at less than 190 pounds and have managed to stay there. I started this whole adventure around Thanksgiving of 2006 at 235 pounds, so today at 185 pounds I've managed to lose 50 pounds over the past 38 months and keep it off.

I had promised myself that I would start running again if I ever got below 190, so last week after recovering for about 8 days after returning from Kili I started running in intervals at 2 minute run and 1 minute walk. The first day I did 10 minutes (miscounted and had extra run minute in the middle) and the second I did 18 minutes. Not sure how far, but I feel like I'm doing a 10 minute mile pace.

Today I did a vertical hike on the hill above Canyon Road (Timpanogos foothills). I managed to go up 1000' in 31 minutes, which is fairly good considering I chose a harder path and got into steep kneedeep breakable crust snow the last 200'.

On the way down I worked my way over one ridge to the North for some almost uninterrupted downhill snow running (after the top 200' of deep breakable crust which isn't runnable). It was great.

I got in one weight workout so far (more later on that) and feel really weak. I'll have to keep that up all the way to Aconcagua takeoff (I normally taper weights to nothing about 3 weeks out from a trip and focus entirely on cardio).

Comments

  1. Getting into/maintaining shape gets tricky once you pass 40. You want to be as strong as you can, but not hurt yourself in the process. You're doing great.

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  2. Thanks David. You're right - my poor brain thinks I'm still 16 - hard to keep it in checkmate.

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