Training for North Carolina

We are in our second week of training to prepare for Phase II of our Appalachian Trail hiking experience.  We are shooting for the end of April/first of May to do the lower part of North Carolina (approximately 90 miles).  At that time, it should be warming up some and not hot yet.  According to http://www.almanac.com/weather/longrange/nc/asheville
"Winter will be slightly milder and much drier than normal, although snowfall will be above normal. The coldest periods will be in mid-December and early and mid- to late February. The snowiest periods will be in early to mid-December, mid-January, and mid-February.  April and May will be cooler and drier than normal, with May especially chilly.
Summer will be a bit cooler than normal, with the hottest periods in early June and early July. Rainfall will be below normal in the north and above normal in the south.
September and October will be much cooler and drier than normal."

We have been monitoring the weather at each of the points along the trail through http://sophiaknows.com/atdb/weather.php

Our training regime consists of walking around the soccer field close to our house and also climbing the bleachers on the field. There are 15 sets of bleachers.  We began last week with 3 laps around the field and 90 times up and down the bleachers.  This week we increased to 4 laps around the field and up to 135 times up and down the bleachers.  We are already feeling stronger and have maintained a rate of 3.2 miles per hour.  Total distance went from 4.68 miles last week to 6 miles this week.  We do this 4 times a week. 

If we can maintain this pace, we will be walking over 10 miles a day and doing 345 reps on the bleachers before the end of April.  At some point about 3 or 4 weeks out, we will add our full pack to our back during training.

We are determined to get ourselves into shape before we take off on our next leg of the AT to try to avoid the sore muscles that we experienced on the GA section.  Also, we would like to be able to cover around 12 miles a day at the beginning of the section in order to make it to a shelter or a campsite each night.

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