2006 Trip
The Appalachian Trail is a very tough and rugged mountainous trail stretching across the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from Maine to Georgia for 2175 miles. The AT is famous for its elevation gain - summiting close to 250 mountains with the equivalent of nearly 100 miles of elevation gain and 100 miles of elevation loss - its not hard to see why!
I know what it takes to keep up high mileage days on the AT and I have the highest respect for past records and the current record holder Andrew Thompson who averaged nearly 48 miles per day with a time of 47 days 10 hours 31 minutes.
Being the person I am, I don’t want to be the record holder or aim to beat Andrews time. I am more interested in blowing away peoples perceptions of what is possible.
I am also approaching the challenge of breaking 40 days from an endurance hiker’s perspective and not an ultra runner’s. I firmly believe that solely hiking is faster than running over a 2200 mile mountainous trail such as the rugged Appalachian Trail. A 100 meter runner can’t sustain his pace for 200m, a 200m runner can’t sustain his pace for 400m… a 10,000m runner can’t sustain his pace for a marathon, a marathon runner can’t sustain his pace for an ultra marathon. So the question is, when does a fast pace walk become more speed/distance efficient than running.
Maybe by August I will know better!
I would like to stress that as with all supported speed hikes/runs, that it is a team effort. My road crew deserve as much credit as I do if together, we pull of a sub 40 AT. Team work is going to be vital to the success. My crew is very experienced. David Blair, aka Lone Wolf, has been involved in many past record attempts and was recommended by David Horton as being one of the top road crew persons around. Namie Bacile, aka Letitbe, became a very close friend of mine towards the end of the 2005 trip. He routinely met me at road crossings to offer me fruit, sodas, and cereal as well as helping out with a places to stay, hot meals and re-supply. But he was also a very genuine person and best of all we share the same sick sense of humour! I trust my team 100% and that is critical to me focusing on the trail.
My tactics are very simple. Keep moving!
Brian at ULA has custom designed 3 packs based on the Relay pack he makes. I plan on carrying one and each of the road team will have a loaded pack ready for me at road crossings so I can ditch and switch with out loosing any time.
Namie and David will each drive a car. This is so they can leapfrog each other to maximise the amount of road crossings they can reach me at. This will be crucial in cutting down pack weight. Water will also be an issue in the middle of summer. Their support will be vital here as well.
I don’t plan on staying with the team at night. I feel a lot of time gets wasted by only going as far as the furthest road crossing for the day. At my last road crossing I will pick up an over night pack with sleeping bag, sleeping pad and tarp. At the first road crossing of each day I will again switch packs to the lighter loads for the daytime.
I plan on sticking to a routine that my body can maintain for the 40 days. I aim to start at 3 or 4 am each morning and hike for 18 hours each day. Without a pack I can maintain 4mph as an average. The question will be for how many days I can keep it up! Can I keep this pace and hike the trail in 32 days or will I find it tough to break Andrew Thompson’s time? I can only answer this question by trying 100%.
Another thing that excites me about this year is having professional photographer Andrew Kornylak, professional film maker Josh Fowler and sports writer Micheal Coren to document the entire record attempt. Ambitious as they are, they plan to enter their work into the Banff film festival amongst other projects.
TGO magazine in the UK will be running three articles on this year’s trip - before, during and after articles covering the record attempt extensively.
I hope that with any media attention I create this year will raise awareness for the steps charity. I often thought last year on many days how lucky I was to have the ability to get out and enjoy the great outdoors. I hope to raise a lot of much needed funding for steps who help out children with extensive birth defects from the waist down. Giving much needed help and support to families and most importantly getting the children mobile to be able to enjoy little things we take for granted. Extensive information about steps can be found on their website. There is also a link to donate on the charity page.
