On Thursday, September 24, I started walking at Lady Bird Lake in Austin at 7:45 in the morning. The goal wasn't speed, and it wasn't climbing. It was time on my feet. My summit day on Guadalupe Peak is going to run about 10 and a half hours, and I needed to know what seven felt like before I asked my body for ten.
The final numbers from my tracking app:
• 11.87 miles
• 6 hours, 55 minutes, 36 seconds
• 1.8 mph average pace
• 114 bpm average heart rate, 141 max
• About 4,800 calories burned
• 333 feet of elevation gain
That last number matters. Lady Bird Lake is flat, and Guadalupe will give me roughly 3,000 feet of climbing. So this wasn't a rehearsal of the mountain. It was a rehearsal of the day.
Slow on purpose
At my first break, 45 minutes in, I told the camera I wasn't moving fast, and I meant it. Early in a long day, going fast is how you run out of gas by hour five.
The splits say it worked. Every two-mile segment landed between 1.6 and 1.8 mph. The slowest one included a porta-potty stop and moving my car to the next lot, because parking was limited to two hours. I had no interest in finishing seven hours of hiking to find a ticket or, worse, an empty space.
Heart rate told a different story. It started around 100 and crept into the 130s by the finish, even though my pace never changed. Same speed, more work. That's fatigue building, and it's exactly what I needed to see.
Fueling every 45 minutes
Every 45 minutes I sat down for five minutes, six or seven if I was really dragging, and ate something. Over the day, that added up to:
• Three butter honetos (a tortilla with peanut butter and honey)
• Two packs 10 salted cashews and 10 peanut M&Ms
• Three single-serve packets of Nate's honey
• A few ounces of beef jerky
I drank 4 liters of water: my 2.5-liter CamelBak, then a 1.5-liter refill once it ran dry. I barely touched my electrolyte drink, maybe half of a 500 mL bottle.
Those short breaks did more than refuel me. Every time I stood back up, I was back to full speed.
The podcast experiment
I also ran a little experiment. For roughly the first two hours, I listened to a podcast. For the rest of the day, I turned everything off and just paid attention.
When I checked the splits afterward, the podcast didn't change my pace in any way I can see. What changed was everything else.
Strangers who recharged my batteries
With my ears open, I stopped for people.
About three hours in, I came across three women sitting side by side, painting the same view. They made three completely different paintings in three different styles. I told them not to mind me, I was just peeking, and when I left I told them it did my heart good. It did.
I talked with a man doing photography. At four and a half hours, I saw a family taking turns snapping photos of each other with the Austin skyline behind them. I offered to take one of all of them together. They were so gracious. Turns out they were visiting from Guatemala, so I told them, "Welcome to Texas y’all."
Near the six-hour mark, a young guy asked if I had a minute to talk about the ACLU. I told him I was almost six hours into a seven-hour hike and would happily talk if he walked with me, because I wasn't stopping. He gave me a fist bump and sent me on my way - I guess he wasn’t that interested in sharing his message
After every one of those conversations, I walked away faster. I'm a people person. That's where my batteries get recharged. That, and a sit-down with some jerky.
Where it hurt
I promised to keep it real, so here's the damage report.
At 2 hours 15 minutes, my right knee started twinging. I noticed I was leaning on my right thigh a lot more than my left, so I worked on evening out my stride. By four and a half hours, my feet were barking. By five and a half hours, my feet and ankles were screaming. At six hours, standing up from a break sent a jolt through my left hip, though I walked it out in a few steps.
I finished just over seven hours. Then I showered at my son Logan's place, drove home to Victoria, and put the chickens up. The next morning I was stiff and slow. But I felt good. Real good.
Why I burned the boats
Talking with a client the day after, I reflected on why I made this whole thing public in the first place.
If I'd kept Guadalupe Peak to myself, I think I would have finished that hike and wondered whether I really wanted to stretch seven hours into ten and a half. At the very least, I'd have pushed the date back.
But I told everybody. That's the whole point of burning the boats: you give yourself no room to retreat. Tell people what's going to happen and how it's going to happen, and then it happens.
So here's what's going to happen. On Sunday, October 4, at sunrise, I start up Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas. The equipment worked. The fueling worked. The water plan worked. And yes, it hurt after a while. That's what it's for. Do hard things.
If you want to see how summit day goes, subscribe so you don't miss it, and share this with someone who's training for their own hard thing.
by Chris Doelle
