How Valerie Trained To Section Hike The Continental Divide Trail

Learn how Valerie used the Online Summit Program to train for hiking during lockdown, and help her get fit and strong for the trail around a number of personal limitations.

Training For The
Continental Divide Trail

This is Valerie. She first reached out to Summit Strength to help her prepare to section hike part of the Continental Divide Trail. Learn how, while being hesitant at first, she found online personal training the perfect tool to help her get fit for the trail.

Valerie has a long history of sports and training. She had been a competitive swimmer, a runner, triathlete, mountain and road biker, as well as a longtime hiker and backpacker. In fact, she had solo thru-hiked the Oregon Coast Trail (600km) the year previously!

But she first reached out to Summit Strength; she wanted some help getting her training for hiking a bit more targeted, to help work around several personal limitations and to ensure she was making the best use of her time.

The first point of call was the Ready To Trek Assessment. This was crucial to identify a few specific areas to put some focus, to help with pain and injury prevention.

As Val had a bit of time on her hands, we decided to start her programming with:

• 2x home strength workouts
• 1x longer hike
• 1x loaded pack walk
•  1x swimming intervals session
• 1x recovery swim
• 1x home recovery/mobility routine

While this was a workload Valerie initially was wanting each week, after a couple of weeks, we noticed her body wasn't recovering as well as we liked. She was a bit fatigued. And we decided she was doing too much.  So to combat this, we dropped the loaded pack walk and one of the swimming session. And this got her back on track!

Now in the initial weeks,  she wasn't 100% sure about the online training for hiking and how it would work for her. But, as we got into things, she realised it suited her very well. Having ease of access to her coach, constant communication and the flexibility of being able to train at home, made the whole experience perfect for her situation.

One speedbump in the process was that Valerie was having trouble eating on her training hikes and around her training sessions. Her stomach wasn't liking it. And this was leaving her struggling for energy on longer hiking days and causing quite a bit of fatigue during the week. To combat this, we modified the training to make this a bit more tolerable. We adjusted workloads and training intensities to help manage the fatigue.  

On top of this, we organised a consultation with Kyle from Valley To Peak Nutrition (who is a dietician who specialises with hikers). And after getting some personalised and specialised advice around her eating, she saw a big difference here.

Over the months, there were plenty of ups and downs. But Valerie stuck with the process, communicated how she was going and slowly but surely we got her there.

Now, unfortunately, her big adventure got cancelled because of COVID. As did her alternate adventure plans. So we will have to wait until later in the year before she gets to tackle a big hike. But either way, Valerie noticed a big difference in her fitness, thoroughly enjoyed the process and learnt a wealth of knowledge to help her in the future.

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