Hiker Deals

If you’re serious about training for any long trip or a strenuous mountaineering trip, skip the “weighted pack on a stair climber” routine day-after-day and work alternating days of rest, distance, and speed into your hike training plan. The best way I’ve found to get a good idea of how much work is being done - without burning myself out is to use a heart rate monitor and follow a good written plan (going too hard can be worse than a skipped day or two).

Start with the Backpacker magazine “Fit for Any Hike” training plan. Much of the training is jogging or trail running, but in the Backpacker plan it’s a lot more relevant to long days with a pack than more common marathon training plans. Running may seem like overdoing it, but it’s necessary unless you want to double or triple your time commitment just walking instead. Since you’re running instead of walking, eaxtra attention needs to be paid to not going too hard and injuring yourself - thus the heart rate monitor. To integrate the heart rate monitor into the Backpacker plan, scan this excellent guide to finding heart rate zones and replace the perceived exertion scores in the Backpacker guide.

Feel free to adjust the training distances in any plan up or down based on your hike length and how much time you have to build up to things. The plans I’ve linked to are 8-week guides, if you have 10 or 12 weeks to train just repeat the first two or four weeks of the 8-week plans. The two things that most need to be avoided are overtraining and injuries - both accomplished by not pushing too hard. There are plenty of rest days in these plans, so a skipped day can be made up. When making up a training day take it easier that day than the way it’s scheduled, because the next day’s workout will suffer when your body is less rested.

If you’re in the market for a heart rate monitor, the Polar S150 heart rate monitor is marked down to $80 (from $140). Also, smaller 10-20% discounts can be found on more models at Heart Rate Monitors USA.