Take a Hike in Southern California

Since my last post about my exer­cise reg­i­men, I have lost another 18 pounds. So that is a total of 33 pounds since I started hik­ing. This is due to a com­bi­na­tion of diet change and my walk­ing. Per the diet change, I stopped munch­ing on peanuts and pret­zels all day while sit­ting at my com­puter. I now have a big bowl of oat­meal, no sugar, with a heap­ing table­spoon of ground flax and a banana for break­fast. I didn’t eat break­fast before. I also cut up two-three apples for lunch. I usu­ally had a lunch­meat sand­wich for lunch before. And then I eat my usual two plates of food for din­ner. I have also cut down on my wine drink­ing in the evening. I now drink my usual two glasses of wine on the week­end instead of every night.
My walk­ing rou­tine has also changed a bit. Since hik­ing up those long, steep inclines with­out stop­ping a few mil­lion times is the prob­lem, I’ve decided to con­cen­trate on my uphill. I’m able to do long dis­tances on fairly flat ter­rain just fine. So…remember the stairs? 92 steps one way? I only go out now on Mon­days, Wednes­days and Fri­days so that my mus­cles have a day in between to rest. On Mon­days and Fri­days I do any­where from 16 – 18 stairs. On Wednes­days I pack my pack full and hike for 6 miles. And, I’m still wear­ing those 5 pound ankle weights and I take no water. This all gives me quite a workout.

Even though these stairs are not even close to hik­ing up those steep, long and gru­elling trails, they are the clos­est I can come to sim­u­lat­ing them while being close to home. From the time I start until I’m done and plunk myself down on a chair for some water, it has only been 1 hour (2 hours on Wednes­days). But dur­ing that time I can really get myself to feel­ing the way I do out on those steep trails when I need to stop and take a rest. On the stairs descent I go down them as quickly as I can so that I don’t have enough time to catch my breath before I’m at the bot­tom and turn right around and start back up again.

You may think that I’m com­plain­ing about long, steep inclines, but I’m not. I’m just not want­ing to keep hold­ing Tyler and Gar­rett up all the time and, we would be able to hike far­ther as well. Accord­ing to them though, my uphill trek­ing has greatly improved. Now I only have to stop to take a rest half the num­ber of times that I used to. This is going to be an on-going chal­lenge in that I want to get to the point that I do not have to take a break at all when walk­ing up a steep incline – unless I’m above 5,000 feet and the air is thin­ner. I might still strug­gle with that a bit. I’ll let you know how I progress from here.

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