Ascending and descending: ca.45 years of training road tests
Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2022 2:26 pm
Hi folks, whereas we know what works for some doesn't work for everybody, I figured I'd share my personal observations about training for hiking and the specific aspect of hiking in the mountains that differs most from running, biking, swimming etc. This concerns ascending and descending.
I first noticed this during my college days. I went hiking with a guy who was a high level cyclist and who was in far better cardio shape than me. My main cardio training was playing basketball and running stadium bleachers. We did a fast strike overnighter to East Lake to climb Mt Brewer in May 1979. There was a pretty big disparity in hiking speed and endurance and we concluded that it was likely that running bleachers was better training (note descending bleachers--didn't run doing that part--is useful for the descents, too) than endurance cycling. 1979 was also the year I "crossed over" with my dad (he and I turned 51 and 20 in late July, early August, respectively) and had to wait up for him, instead of the other way around when we did our ambitious peak bagging trips. Whereas a lot of this was simply me becoming stronger and my dad aging, we also concluded that my bleacher running put me in better condition for mountain hiking than his distance running did, and his prowess as a distance runner was far beyond what I was capable of (he ran a 2:58 marathon in 1976 at age 48) then or ever. My dad adjusted his training for backpack trips to fast hiking up Black Mtn (above Los Altos), a hike that I think was in the 2000' of gain range. This appeared to improve his hiking performance.
So now I fast forward to 2022. My year didn't start out strong, what with radiation and hormone therapy, with the latter likely tied to worst back problems I've had since 2006 the slowest-to-heal knee injury I've had since 1978; this impeded my cardio and strength training. In mid June of this year, my daughter Dawn wiped me out on ascents with a full pack and whereas she had done that to me in 2019, I had trained hard enough of 2020 and 2021 to put me out in front. Looking at my time to backpacking Green L. (S Fork Bishop Creek) with Dawn on that trip, it was clear that this wasn't so much about Dawn being fast but me being slow. Then in late July, my son Lee, scorched me on ascents on dayhikes, and I was so beat up after these three nominally easy dayhikes that I felt I had returned from a 10-day backpack trip. Lee suggested that I needed to start running up hills. My knee had recovered so that I was back to running regularly and doing 4-mile runs with comparative ease but these were flat runs. I thought that working hard on the hikes with Lee and then the 3-day backpack N of Donner improved my hiking strength, so I still didn't start doing any hill work. My fast dayhike time into Kaiser Wilderness two weeks ago seemed to suggest I was "back" to what I considered my baseline. I followed that with my most effortless 4-mile run I've had in 2022. Yesterday, however, I was awakened to the difference between ascending and doing any sort of relatively flat training: I did my first session of stairwell training at Fresno State in 2022. The stairwell is in the science building I have my office in and it is 3 tall flights (somewhere around 15' each) to the top. Back when I did them regularly (2021 and before) doing between 20 and 25 round trips to the top was standard, taking two steps at a time in ascent. Yesterday by the 3rd rep I was hurting and I felt the way I did when I was trying to catch up with Lee. By my 10th rep I was getting dizzy and light headed. I stopped at 15 reps with the thought that I'd need to start doing the stairwell more regularly (the heat in said stairwell right now is a major disincentive to do that workout). This was a huge illustration of the difference between flat-land training (running, for example) and ascending hills, mountains, bleachers, or stairwells.
It is odd that I seemed to have forgotten 40 years of experience with the value of "ascent training" and it took Lee's comment a few weeks back to remind me. With that in mind, I thought I'd try something different this morning in Castro Valley before it got warm: there is a hill I can walk up near my house that I last did when I was recovering from prostate cancer surgery at the end of 2018: I remember doing this hike while holding up my catheter and bag with a sling and strap set up I had put together. This time, no bag and no catheter, but I loaded a 50lb bag of rice into my Baltoro 85 and took off up the hill. This is easily the hardest cardio workout I've done (other than my harder backpack trips). Sometime after reaching the top and starting the descent back home I hit the wall--'putting on the brakes' going downhill requires almost as much energy as ascending. This was probably at about the 2.5 mi mark and it was where I was at on part 2 of my Kaiser Wilderness (after the 5 mi + opening leg that I did without a break) hike two weeks ago when I hit the wall doing some class 3 stuff and took a water and energy bar break. The difference this time was that I planned to do this with no stops. I got light-headed and dizzy, and the legs wobbled, but I kept going and became steadier and faster before grunting up the last uphill (it always seems to be uphill to the finish, doesn't it) to my house. I will have to do that again (with a day to recover in between), although I think I need to adjust my weight balance on my pack because I bruised my lowermost back. As you can probably guess there is a bit more to this than the simple desire to get in better shape: I have two backpack trips scheduled this fall with Lee.
I first noticed this during my college days. I went hiking with a guy who was a high level cyclist and who was in far better cardio shape than me. My main cardio training was playing basketball and running stadium bleachers. We did a fast strike overnighter to East Lake to climb Mt Brewer in May 1979. There was a pretty big disparity in hiking speed and endurance and we concluded that it was likely that running bleachers was better training (note descending bleachers--didn't run doing that part--is useful for the descents, too) than endurance cycling. 1979 was also the year I "crossed over" with my dad (he and I turned 51 and 20 in late July, early August, respectively) and had to wait up for him, instead of the other way around when we did our ambitious peak bagging trips. Whereas a lot of this was simply me becoming stronger and my dad aging, we also concluded that my bleacher running put me in better condition for mountain hiking than his distance running did, and his prowess as a distance runner was far beyond what I was capable of (he ran a 2:58 marathon in 1976 at age 48) then or ever. My dad adjusted his training for backpack trips to fast hiking up Black Mtn (above Los Altos), a hike that I think was in the 2000' of gain range. This appeared to improve his hiking performance.
So now I fast forward to 2022. My year didn't start out strong, what with radiation and hormone therapy, with the latter likely tied to worst back problems I've had since 2006 the slowest-to-heal knee injury I've had since 1978; this impeded my cardio and strength training. In mid June of this year, my daughter Dawn wiped me out on ascents with a full pack and whereas she had done that to me in 2019, I had trained hard enough of 2020 and 2021 to put me out in front. Looking at my time to backpacking Green L. (S Fork Bishop Creek) with Dawn on that trip, it was clear that this wasn't so much about Dawn being fast but me being slow. Then in late July, my son Lee, scorched me on ascents on dayhikes, and I was so beat up after these three nominally easy dayhikes that I felt I had returned from a 10-day backpack trip. Lee suggested that I needed to start running up hills. My knee had recovered so that I was back to running regularly and doing 4-mile runs with comparative ease but these were flat runs. I thought that working hard on the hikes with Lee and then the 3-day backpack N of Donner improved my hiking strength, so I still didn't start doing any hill work. My fast dayhike time into Kaiser Wilderness two weeks ago seemed to suggest I was "back" to what I considered my baseline. I followed that with my most effortless 4-mile run I've had in 2022. Yesterday, however, I was awakened to the difference between ascending and doing any sort of relatively flat training: I did my first session of stairwell training at Fresno State in 2022. The stairwell is in the science building I have my office in and it is 3 tall flights (somewhere around 15' each) to the top. Back when I did them regularly (2021 and before) doing between 20 and 25 round trips to the top was standard, taking two steps at a time in ascent. Yesterday by the 3rd rep I was hurting and I felt the way I did when I was trying to catch up with Lee. By my 10th rep I was getting dizzy and light headed. I stopped at 15 reps with the thought that I'd need to start doing the stairwell more regularly (the heat in said stairwell right now is a major disincentive to do that workout). This was a huge illustration of the difference between flat-land training (running, for example) and ascending hills, mountains, bleachers, or stairwells.
It is odd that I seemed to have forgotten 40 years of experience with the value of "ascent training" and it took Lee's comment a few weeks back to remind me. With that in mind, I thought I'd try something different this morning in Castro Valley before it got warm: there is a hill I can walk up near my house that I last did when I was recovering from prostate cancer surgery at the end of 2018: I remember doing this hike while holding up my catheter and bag with a sling and strap set up I had put together. This time, no bag and no catheter, but I loaded a 50lb bag of rice into my Baltoro 85 and took off up the hill. This is easily the hardest cardio workout I've done (other than my harder backpack trips). Sometime after reaching the top and starting the descent back home I hit the wall--'putting on the brakes' going downhill requires almost as much energy as ascending. This was probably at about the 2.5 mi mark and it was where I was at on part 2 of my Kaiser Wilderness (after the 5 mi + opening leg that I did without a break) hike two weeks ago when I hit the wall doing some class 3 stuff and took a water and energy bar break. The difference this time was that I planned to do this with no stops. I got light-headed and dizzy, and the legs wobbled, but I kept going and became steadier and faster before grunting up the last uphill (it always seems to be uphill to the finish, doesn't it) to my house. I will have to do that again (with a day to recover in between), although I think I need to adjust my weight balance on my pack because I bruised my lowermost back. As you can probably guess there is a bit more to this than the simple desire to get in better shape: I have two backpack trips scheduled this fall with Lee.