Training For To Hike Maine’s Appalachian Trail

​In this episode, I interview Summit Strength client Cathleen about her training journey to conquer Maine's notoriously challenging section of the Appalachian Trail. Inside, she shares insights into her training, challenges, and experiences on some of the toughest sections of the entire AT. 

Section Hiking The Appalachian Trail In Maine

"I've been trained for this."

At 62, Cathleen was sitting on a rock partway up one of the most technical climbs on the entire Appalachian Trail, asking herself what she was doing there. She took a rest, had a snack, and got back up.

It was great to have Cathleen on the podcast to talk about her multi-year journey to finish the 282-mile Maine Appalachian Trail, including the notoriously brutal Mahoosuc Notch and Old Spec.

Inside we chat about:
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• Why a former competitive athlete who already thought she knew how to train needed a different approach for her hiking
• How trusting a program that looked "too easy" at first helped her prepare for the tough hikes of Katahdin, the 100 Mile Wilderness and the Mahoosuc Notch (known as the hardest section of the Appalachian Trail)
• The trailside mantra taped to her trekking pole that she still leans on when a climb starts to feel overwhelming

Episode Transcript:

​Q: So to start things off, do you just want to give us a little bit of a background about yourself and just let us know who you are, where you're from, what do you do and what is your background in hiking?

I'm a retired landscaper from Maine. I've been physical my whole life. I did hike Mount Washington and another 4,000 footer, and I started backpacking in 2019 in the White Mountain National Forest.

Q: Let's zoom back and talk about before we actually started working together, before you started working with Summit Strength. Back in the past, what was your typical approach to training, to physical exercise? How did you go about things with that?

I was a competitive collegiate athlete when I was in school, and back in the day, when you trained, you pushed really hard. You left nothing in reserve, because if you did, you weren't working hard enough to win. So I just pushed really hard, and I had that mentality.

Then, in my job as a landscaper, it was heavy lifting and hauling, and in the wintertime when I wasn't landscaping, we had snowshoes, cross-country skiing, and other winter exercises. After my collegiate days, I really didn't have any real training. I was so physically active that I didn't think I needed it. I was getting my physical training on the job.

Q: And then when we first started working together, what was the big goal that you'd set yourself? And what was the instigator of that particular goal?

So after I retired my business, I sat down and said, "What do you want to do with the rest of your life?" And the first one was, "I really want to finish the Maine Appalachian Trail." It was like the biggest thing. There were other things I wanted to do, like more weaving and stuff, but finishing the Maine AT, at that point it was 286 miles, now it's down to 282. This is my life ambition after retirement: to finish the Maine AT.

Q: And then with that insight, what did make you decide to reach out for extra help, and what were the things that you knew you needed some help with?

Basically, I knew I needed a lot of help, because we had done 60 miles of it, and I just felt that my body wasn't, I don't want to say failing, but it wasn't doing what I anticipated it was supposed to do. I wasn't at the level that I wanted to be at, and it was the first time in my life that I was like, really? How come you're not doing this? This should be easy. You should be able to do this. So that was hard.

I had been following you for a few years, and I tried to cobble together some of your free workouts, but it wasn't for me. I tried backpacking with more disappointments. We went in the Whites and it just wasn't working.

Then the other piece, which is significant, is that I had three shoulder surgeries, and I thought, even before I reached out, would he even consider me as a client, because of the shoulder surgeries I had? I can only use one trekking pole, there's just a lot of workaround, and I thought he might not even want to deal with me. So I said, well, the worst that can happen is he says no, and then I'm fine, I'll just keep going. So I reached out to Lavinia, and she said, "Of course." I was just ecstatic. I was so happy that you would take me on as a client.

Q: So tell us a little bit now about the training that you did do through Summit Strength. What did the program look like? What types of things were you doing?

Well, at first I thought, my goodness, this is really too easy, because I was used to being in the weight room, lifting heavy weights, being in the gym and running hard. And it's like, wow, I have three strength trainings at home. I've got my loaded pack, hiking, nose breathing, cardio hiking, tempo walking. The strength training was at home, with bands and some hand weights. So it was completely different.

One thing I didn't mention before is that, being a collegiate athlete, one of the most important things is you always trust your coach. With you giving me this program, and me saying, "Wow, I did that and that wasn't so bad," that was half an hour, 45 minutes. "Huh, that's not too bad. I can do this. This is doable, but is it really going to work?" And I just said, trust your coach, because you're supposed to. And it worked.

I should caveat by saying your workouts weren't easy peasy, they were hard, but it was so different that it wasn't overwhelming. I was able to accomplish them and still do part of my day.

Q: And then I guess aside from the level of difficulty, and maybe starting off a little bit easier than your experience as a collegiate athlete, was there anything else in there that was a little bit different, that maybe you hadn't done before, or different to how you approached things in the past?

Most of the time it was either running or being in the weight room. I did all my weights in the weight room, and now I'm at home doing weights. In fact, I even asked, "Should I be lifting more?" That came up in a conversation I had with you, and you said, "No, no, I'll let you know. You're good, you're where you should be." So I wanted to push, and then I realized that wasn't necessarily going to get me where I need to be. I had to say, in Rowan I trust. He's my coach, he can do this. He's got me this far.

Q: And then when it comes down to training journeys, we always say no training journey is ever linear. There's always many things that come up and get in the way. So through your training, were there any roadblocks that did come up along the way? And if so, how did you go about overcoming them?

I think the biggest roadblock, about five months in, was that I started losing too much weight. Then I didn't want to train. I was like, no, I don't want to do this, and that was so unusual for me. You mentioned it was time for me to talk with the registered dietitian, so I made an appointment with him. Little did I know I was supposed to be eating more. I thought I was eating healthy, but I needed to change what I was eating and how I was eating, not necessarily what, but the timing, and not losing so much weight.

Thankfully, you have a program set up where you can reach out to the registered dietician to get that information, so that was huge. It wasn't a mental thing, it was a food thing for me. I needed to eat more, which is really hard, I think, for a woman, because we like losing weight, this is great, but then it's like, oh, you can't train, I don't want to train. So I had to get over that mentally too.

The other hurdle that came up this year was that I had always hiked with my husband or one of our dogs, and this year I had to do some hiking in the North Woods by myself. You had asked me, what are you afraid of, how can you feel better about it? I took a long thought on that one, and it was more the fact that I was by myself. I had music, and I had the note on my trekking pole that said smile, and I just kept singing. That got me through Baxter State Park, ten miles, and it was the funnest ten miles I've ever done on the whole Maine AT. My fear was of bears, there were reports of a cow moose with two babies, which is not a good scene if you're hiking by yourself. But because I was singing, apparently they stayed away, so it was all good.
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The other thing that came up, mostly in the beginning, was strained muscles, a sprained ankle, and my shoulder. You had given me a plan, took that information, and gave me active recovery. I was amazed at how fast I recovered with active recovery, rather than just resting. I had an ankle that was beautifully colored, and I was able to continue my walks. It didn't really bother me and got so much better, faster. That was something I learned that could have been a huge roadblock, but it didn't end up being one at all.

​Q: I want to go back a little bit and just jump into one thing you briefly mentioned, the note on the trekking pole. Could you tell us the story of that? What's it all about? What actually is it? Why did you do it? Give us the story there.

So I needed confidence, and it goes back to trust your coach. On my trekking pole I have I-R-I-T, "In Rowan I trust," and I also have "smile." I took a piece of Leukotape and taped it over the trekking pole and wrote that. So when I'm on trail, if things are looking overwhelming, I'm holding my trekking pole and I look at it and it's like, oh, smile, okay, I'll smile. Then, if I'm going up a really steep incline, okay, in Rowan I trust, I can do this. So it was cues for me to continue forward with a smile.

Q: Let's zoom forward a little bit to more recent times. Let's talk about the most recent adventures that you've had, because you've done some pretty cool things this year. What did you set for yourself this year? What specifically were you going to do, and what did you know you needed to prepare for this year specifically?

This year I needed to do the Mahoosuc Notch, the Arm, and Old Spec. It was like any of the other miles I've done on the Maine AT. I needed to be able to boulder hop, walk on slippery rock faces and boulders, hike straight up a mountain, sometimes with a trout stream in the middle of it because of the rain. There were ladders bolted onto rock slabs, so you could either ascend or descend. I needed to be able to do all of that.

Our training, I will say, when I told you I was doing the Mahoosucs and climbing up the Arm, I looked at one of the sessions and went, "Oh no, Rowan, please no." Then I laughed and thought, well, you've got this, he wouldn't give it to you if you couldn't do it. Eight minutes of stepping with your heavy pack on, then two minutes of rest, and dare I say it felt like a hundred times, but I know it wasn't. Also known as the most boring session in the world, but very effective.

Q: And then tell us then, how did the adventures go? Talk us through it. Talk us through how it went on the trail.

It started last year. I've been with you for a few years, and the biggest one was, I never thought I'd be able to do it, Katahdin. It's called Beast of the East, and it is a rugged, technical climb. I went with one of my hiking buddies. I climbed up and down with a smile on my face. Right before I got to the top, right before I got to the sawhorse, I started to shake and I started to cry, because it was like, oh my goodness, I am actually going to stand on the sawhorse of the sign. He looked at me and said, "We've got a turnaround time." So I said, okay, get my butt on the sign, and yay. That hike gave me so much confidence.

Then, a couple weeks later, I tackled the 100 Mile Wilderness, which had many challenges for me. One being that I was going to be away from my husband and dog for a significant period of time. Eating was a hard thing for me on the trail, so I had to talk with the registered dietician about food choices, fuel timing, and trying to get all that done. I had a motto that goes back to my training as a collegiate athlete: just because you can, doesn't mean you should. To me, that meant just because I can do more miles each day doesn't mean I should. Part of why I'm doing the Maine AT is because I live here and I want to enjoy everything Maine has to offer. When I come up to a vista, I look out and say, wow, I live here. It's just so beautiful, so rugged, so remote, and I wanted to experience that.

But I knew it was going to push my capabilities. There were roots and trail that are slippery, rocks in the trail, some mountains. One of the challenging things was putting so many days together, which I had never done. I really had to dig deep to finish. I think the harder we work at something, the prouder we are of it when we finish. It's like such an accomplishment, it's like, wow, I did that.

Luckily there were only two other people who witnessed this, but when I got out of the Hundred, at the golden road, a logging road where logging trucks go by, I literally went down on my hands and knees and touched the golden road, and I really yelled, thank you, Rowan. I thought you could hear me all the way across the world, because it was loud. With your training and your help, I just did something that, I thought Katahdin was big, but this was bigger. I never thought I could do that.

So that was last year, and then I needed a break, so we had winter for me to rest and recover. This year it was some day hikes throughout. There was one where I had a couple of 4,000-footers in one day hike, and it felt like a trout stream because I was walking on slippery rocks going up these two mountains. I didn't realize I was just chugging my way up. I was fueling and drinking when I should, and I was just chugging my way up. When I got to the top of the second mountain and was heading down to the road to meet my husband, which was still miles away, I left him a message, and I was so glad I did, because I still have it. The excitement of, oh my goodness, I just chugged my way up two mountains. Again, in Rowan I trust, I cannot believe I did this smiling the whole way. Although I think I did say on that note to my husband, thank goodness I had a light pack. It was one of those things where I had a blast, where I never thought hiking up a 4,000-footer would be any fun, and I did. I hiked up two in three hours, and it was a blast.

Then the last adventure was just recently. I hiked from the New Hampshire border on the Maine AT to Route 26, which incorporates the Mahoosuc Notch, the Mahoosuc Arm, and Old Spec. It's the hardest, slowest, most technical section of the whole AT, not just in Maine. I looked at FarOut on the app to see what they had to say about the Mahoosuc Arm, and it said a grueling climb, and I thought, yeah, that described it, I kind of felt that way, it was grueling. But that was good.

It was the hardest backpacking with my heavy pack that I've ever done, and probably will ever do, because it was really hard. There were bog boards, rock faces, ascents and descents, again with the ladders, wrought iron drilled into the rock faces, and wooden ladders. There were times where you were on your toes and fingertipping crevices to climb up. Going through the notch, there were a lot of butt slides, crawls, cave crawls, squeezes, jumps. One of the guys we saw going through said, "Going through the notch is choose your own adventure," and that's about what we did. The boulders in the notch were as big as large trucks. One of the things in the FarOut app said it's like sending 50 buses down and trying to figure your way out, and that's kind of how it was.
Luckily, my hiking partner and I decided to continue with my motto of just because I can go fast doesn't mean I should, so we slowed right down. We were analyzing pretty much every step we were taking anyway through the whole hike, but especially that one, because some of the drops were like six feet that I had to slide down. It was challenging, especially with my shoulder and the limitations I have with that, trying to get through the cave crawls. I don't like elevators, so I'm a little claustrophobic, so doing these cave crawls, he's like, "Oh come on, come on," and I'm like, "When you're out, I will blow through, so you just get out of that little section, don't hold me up." I didn't want to run him over. But that was a challenge.

When we had finished that night, going through the Notch and up the Arm, we were in our respective tents, and he says to me, "Are you reconsidering any of your life's choices?" I cracked up, because it was like, oh yeah. I said, going up the Arm, I was sitting on one of the rocks thinking, what am I doing, at my age, I'm 62 years old, what are you thinking? And then I thought, well, I'm thinking that I've been trained for this, and I'm just sitting here taking a rest, took off my pack and I'll put it on, had a snack, and now I'm going to put my pack on and head back up. It was really funny that he asked that, because I did get that brief moment of, oh my goodness.

Then the last day, going through, climbing up Old Speck, we left in the morning early. We were about halfway up Old Speck Mountain, and it was about 6:30, and my mind just went south. I was in the dumps, everything was a challenge. We looked out and saw a rock face, and I said, well, we can't go there because that looks really dangerous. I was looking at my trekking pole, and it's like, in Rowan I trust, smile, and I thought, wait a minute, I need more than that. So I whipped out my phone, and I looked at him and said, "You're probably not going to like this." And I went to a song, I don't know if I can say it or not, but it's a Shakira song about not giving up. He smiled at me and started laughing, because he has a teenage daughter, so he knows all about this song. I'm just bebopping to this song loudly, no one's around, but that got me out of negative thinking. That rock face over there didn't look as intimidating as it did a moment ago. I'm like, okay, this is great, so now we're chugging along again. But little did I know that, yes, that rock face, we did go over. It was fingertip and toe climbing, hand over hand, off the face of the mountain.

But I did do it, and then we got to the top, and we were so excited. I sat down and kept staring at the sign going, wow, it's just downhill now, that's great. Well, it was a long downhill. We kept hearing cars, and then finally we saw cars, and I was like, look, cars, cars! And then there was my pup and my husband, and it was like, yay, we're done, thank goodness I made it out of the Mahoosuc Notch. I was like, yes, I'm done.

So yeah, those are my adventures, and they were very challenging, but all in all, you made it so my body could do it, and I was just dealing with my negative, my mental aspect. You trained me and taught me how to work out of that. So that was really cool.

Q: And I guess when you came off the trail this time around, obviously a massive, massive, massive adventure, pushed through the physical, pushed through the mental, what was going through your head at the end, and how did you celebrate such a big achievement?

With a pizza. It was how I did it: celebrating, giving my husband hugs and snuggling with my dog, and having a pizza. Then I came home and had quiet time. So that was celebrating for me, honoring what my hiking partner and I did. I sent him a message the next day: "We did it!" And he said, "Yes, we did."

Q: So you've accomplished a lot over the last few years, such huge accomplishments there. So talk me through, what's the plan moving forward? What's the plan for hiking? What's the plan for the adventures? What's next on your radar?

I still have 33 miles left. I will break those up, and they'll be day packing. It's still southern Maine, so you're still looking at some rugged terrain, the same, maybe not as technical as the Notch, but still more technical than the rest of Maine. So yeah, I still have that left. Got those 33 miles, I gotta do them.

Q: And then if there were any listeners today hearing this story, hearing these sections you've done, hearing these types of adventures, if there was someone else who was considering whether it was these sections, like over in the Maine Appalachian Trail, that they wanted to do, or maybe something similar for themselves, what advice would you give them?

Unfortunately, I would tell them to either do hills or step-ups. The mountains on the East Coast are straight up, we don't have switchbacks. I don't want to say much harder, because I've never done a mountain out west, but from anecdotal folks who have, they said, wow, these mountains in the east are just straight up, why don't you have switchbacks? So I think training, if you want to experience Maine and have a good time, training, step-ups, heavy pack, walking with a pack. Yeah, unfortunately, step-ups.

Q: Now, before we do wrap up, was there anything else that we kind of haven't had a chance to cover today that you did want to add?

I can't say it enough, Rowan, you are always there for me, whether it's you're always there to pivot with me, tired knee, not eating enough, you always give me a way to continue training, but rest and recover. You're always there being positive, and it's been so important to me. I greatly appreciate it, and I'm not just saying that. I mean, honestly, I don't know how many people have I-R-I-T on their trekking pole. So, yeah.
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The other thing was I found that my age, at 62, played a bigger role this year in my recovery, on and off the trail. I just, you know, to me it was like, okay, well, you can't do that, it's just like pivoting, like you had taught me, how do we get over this? I never once thought I'm not going to finish the Maine AT, all 282 miles. Little did I know, when I started this adventure, that it's the hardest or second hardest state on the whole Appalachian Trail. Of course, because I live here, I wanted to do it. But it's been a challenge. After working with you, I've enjoyed every minute of the Maine AT.

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