Of Mud & Hills: Team Roger Toughens up

The route of the Rob Roy Way

Last Friday, May 13th marked exactly four weeks until Team Roger Lowa boards a plane for a long-awaited, thrice-postponed trip to Scotland and England. Naturally, we plan to see lots of must-visit sights: Glasgow, Edinburgh, castles, islands, distilleries (there will be much more about Scotch in the future, trust me), Liverpool, and London. But the true heart of the trip will be an 80-mile, 8 day hike along a route in the mid-eastern Highlands called The Rob Roy Way. From the town of Drymen (pronounced Drimmin) to the town of Pitlochry, the four of us will attempt to walk an average of 10 miles a day (some slightly shorter, some longer) without complaining or wondering what possessed us. 

Bahahaha--sure.

Why?

A practice hiking trail in Wisconsin

Not entirely because we're crazy (although we are--in the best way, of course) but because distance
hiking is an amazing sport, because we'll see things and places we'd never see from a car or tour bus, because walking in the rain is so much fun, because we can, but primarily because we, Cap (Jan) and Babs (Liz), twisted Scout's (Pete) and Betty's (Tami) arms back in 2019 and said "You will come with us to walk in Scotland or we'll never hike with you again." (That isn't true. We suggested politely that they would love it and it took about .75 seconds for them to say that if we left them behind THEY'D never hike with us again.)

Since the trip was planned for May of The-Year-That-Shall-Not-be-Named, we obviously couldn't go and postponed/rebooked everything for one year later. Then came 2021, and because the world (most distressingly for us the UK) was closed, we couldn't go then either even though we rescheduled the entire trip for a third time. This year, we will go if have to swim there.

A Minnesota rocky uphill

Training in the mud

It's not hard to prepare for sightseeing, but training for a distance hike is a different matter. Even though Team Roger has been hiking for years, we do tend to get soft over the winter holidays. Cap and I (Babs) have done distance hikes before. In
2012 we crossed northern England (196 miles on the Coast to Coast walk) and in 2017 we trekked the West Highland Way in Scotland (100 miles) and the most important thing we learned was how to climb four-foot boulders in pouring rain. The second most important thing we learned was that you can't head for an 80-mile hike without good preparation. 

After a very cold and wet but unusually low-snow Minnesota winter that forced us to take hikes on our treadmills, a few rare snowshoeing outings (it might only have been one), and a couple of cold, icy walks that required snow boots and crampons, we finally got out onto the trails only to find water and mud--both very good preparations for Scottish trekking.

 

 

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Betty & Babbles. Cap & Scout are the ants in the background.

 

We have ramped up our training, four weeks out from departure. One rule-of-thumb for knowing you are ready to hike multiple long days is the ability to hike 10-miles, two days in a row. This weekend we made three hikes (in addition to daily walks in our respective neighborhoods) carrying full day backpacks: an 8-mile rugged terrain hike in Wisconsin (Interstate State Park-a gorgeous riverside park shared by Minnesota and its cheese-loving neighbor; a 7-mile easy rolling hike in a gorgeous suburban regional park (Lebanon Hills in Eagan, MN) and a 10.5-miler along a Rails to Trails path with a loop in a beautiful wooded side park (The Luce Line-Long Lake, MN). 

Lest anyone think we are in perfect shape, think again. Although we are kind of badass for our ages, we make no claim to be experts--we just do this so our children don't think we're getting old. Trust us, after 10 miles, everyone wants to stop and when we do, there might not be actual tears, but there are half a dozen limping steps and some whining before we can take a normal stride. But we have a couple more weeks to continuing building up to being hard-bodied, and we have some nice long treks planned. It could well be that any given night one or more of us will be curled up on a couch eating pickles to forestall leg cramps. But we'll pop up the next morning ready to walk again. 

Tami, Liz, Jan & Pete

What's the takeaway advice for this if you want to do your own training for a long hike? Walk a lot. Go up hills. Go down hills. Walk on rocks, boulders, asphalt, grass. Find water to cross. Get used to the backpack you want to use. Increase your distances slowly. Find a pub to eat at after a long hike (at this we ARE experts). And when three miles feels like a warm-up, you'll be ready to go.

 

Or so we tell ourselves. 

 

Here are a few more pics from our spring hikes. Notice that in addition to tired feet, we also get to see some very pretty sights right here in our own backyard!

 

We kind of expected to see Luke's X-wing.

Cap and Scout checking out a wrong turn down a steep hill.

One of Betty & Cap's favorite parts of hiking is checking the maps and knowing the route. One of Babs and Scout's favorite parts is not having to check the maps.

Babs going up

The reward for tired feet.

We'll keep you updated on the progress and the possible need for pickle juice (it really does work for cramping hamstrings). 

 

Meanwhile, coming up on the blog: What we know about curing whining with Scotch plus the official Team Roger Lowa slogan-slash-toast.