For the regulars of the Tuesday and Friday evening classes I coach or my fellow 4pm-ers: you may have noticed I wasn’t around much during October. Piper and I spent 10 days in Southern Patagonia of Argentina hiking their Glacier National Park and the Andes Mountains.
Often in the lead up to this trip, and during it, people would always says, “Oh wow. So you must really into hiking?” Well… actually no. I think to call yourself someone who hikes, owning hiking books feels like a standard prerequisite. We did not own those. Or anything other meaningful hiking gear for a trip to Patagonia. Sure, we like to hike. In theory. Do we do it often? No. Like many people, when traveling or maybe 1-2 other weekends a year, I might go on a hike that is a few hours long. A few miles to some vista that is worth checking out. That’s it. But 10-15 mile days, stacked multiple days in a row? Never.
Leading into the trip this didn’t concern me at all. First, life was feeling a bit too crazy to spend time worrying about that. A one-year-old at home and balancing the addition of coaching were enough to keep me preoccupied. Second, tons of other people do this - it can’t be that big of a deal? And third, my time spent at CrossFit Renew has me in the best physical condition of my life. I’d been focused on rehabbing a hip strain in advance of this trip but otherwise things seemed rock solid.
A few days before leaving, I was with my sister who is going on a 3 week hiking trip in January. Being smarter than me, she talked to our cousin, a physical therapist and strength and conditioning coach, asking for advice to prepare for their 21 day trip. He recommended doing 3 things each week: lift heavy, some form of interval conditioning, and going for a long walk, 5+ miles, weighted if possible. Hearing this, I felt pretty good. Lifting heavy and interval training - that’s just CrossFit. I didn’t do any weighted distance walking but that would be fine, right?
Our first day of hiking wound up being our hardest - the longest distance with the most change in elevation. Overall, I felt great. We seemed to be racking up miles at a great clip and our conditioning wasn’t an issue. Towards the end of the day, things started to slow down with some soreness in my feet and specifically my right achilles - reasonable, I thought, after a long day of hiking. Until I woke up the next morning and had to hobble out of bed barely able to put weight down on that foot. With several days of hiking still ahead, I gritted my teeth and beared down as I wasn't going to miss out on this trip. Fortunately, once I got moving, I was able to keep moving. Stopping for rest was the enemy. All things I now know are symptoms of tendonitis from overuse. Fortunately, each day it got a little better and generally seemed to improve. An inconvenience for sure but ultimately it didn’t change anything about the trip. But how did I not see this coming? My hip was my current issue. Now my achilles out of nowhere?
CrossFit states that we fail at the margins of our experience. This means that what, where, and how you train regularly determines your strengths but also develops the blueprint for your weaknesses. What did I do in the lead up? Lifted heavy. Trained in intervals. And the margin of my experience - well, hiking long distances.
And to be clear, just because you hit the margin of your experience doesn’t mean you’re going to fail or that you will even get injured. The likelihood simply increases. You can’t always anticipate every outcome. But in hindsight, I think this is something that I would have known about had my preparation better pushed the boundaries of my training.
So what now? A heavy dose of weighted calf raises for the foreseeable future. Limiting some higher impact exercises when my body tells me too. And planning that next adventure 😀
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