Four Friday Rambles about Mountains (Actual and Mental)

In August, I’m supposed to this very-intimidating-to-me day-long hike with a couple of friends. Not only am I trying to overprepare for the hike, apparently, I am trying to overthink my way through it, too, SIGH. The hike is in New Hampshire’s White Mountains; it’s called the Franconia Ridge Loop and includes 3 summits over 8.1 miles, as well as a ridiculous amount of terrifying-to-me All Trails reviews. It would be the longest anything I’ve done in my life. 

 

On any given day, my concerns range from:

-The friends I’m going with are from my decade doing a Crossfit-ish like women’s bootcamp. They are two of my loveliest and closest friends, but also were the ones intimidatingly strong and fit and fast in class. The last time we hiked a mountain (6 years ago), they were over an hour ahead of me. WHAT IF I CAN’T KEEP UP?!?!

-5 or 6 years ago when we were doing these yearly NH hikes, I had this weird thing where I was absolutely miserable going up the mountains but was completely enthralled going down; they were two separate experiences for me. Over the years, I attributed this to not preparing for the hikes at all outside of going to bootcamp 3x a week and just not being a “hiker”. However, working with this nutritionist made me realize that I was probably miserable because I was too nervous to eat the night before and morning of the hikes and then would climb up a 4,000 foot mountain very under fueled – we would then EAT LUNCH at the summit (always a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for me) and then I would feel oh-so-much better heading back down because I ate. Oof.

 

-Obviously, I am training for this. On paper, it’s the perfect way to get me back into regular strength training and build endurance: increasing long walks every weekend, using the Peloton app for treadmill hikes a few times a week, lower body strength workouts a couple times a week, practice hikes, all the stretching and mobility… but, I’m both convinced I’m going to end up injured again and not be able to do this AND fighting a lifelong pattern of using that excuse to not put in the work. Assuming I’ll fail at something and not trying is one of those former-gifted-child curses (so much easier to only do things I know I can do well, haha!) and I really want to break this pattern and just go for this.

 

-Everything feels so, so busy right now. Lil Momma has a recital of some sort the next 7 out of 8 weekends, softball 3x a week, and we just got a table and chairs for the deck and all I want to do is have dinner on the deck and make memories and we are never home! This is one of my busiest times at work. There are house projects and life admin and still-going-on-caretaking-admin and… that’s the thing, right? There is always going to be all the things all the time for all the people, but finding space for ME to have wild adventures to hold close and experience has to happen, too. Prioritizing my own needs and dreams has always seemed like a mountain I’d never climb (ouch, analogy), but maybe it’s time to try…

 

Cheers to your weekends and those dreams and challenges we hide away/from sometimes! More next week on screentime, training for this, and my continued love for my bird spycam!