Month: August 2016

13 days and counting.  Today we met another training goal – hike Mount Tamany at the Delaware Water Gap.  We know the elevations in the Pyrenees will be very steep so we wanted to test out legs.  Mount Tamany was really part hike, part mountain climb but we made it.  The walk was only just over 3 miles but took almost 3 hours because of the very steep climb.  We were relieved not see any bear as we’ve read that there’s a large black bear population in this area.  The views were absolutely worth the sweat and there was A LOT of sweat.

 

 

Thanks to Brian who told us about this trail, it was challenge and felt good to make it.

 

We are just 24 days away from our Camino departure date and we’ve been training for 12 weeks.  We began walking 3 to 4 days each week without our backpacks and have been tracking our progress on  Strava.  Strava is an app that’s designed for runners or bikers but it’s worked really well for us.  It tracks distance, pace and elevation which is great as there are a few steep climbs at the beginning of our Camino in the Pyrenees.

In the middle of June we added our backpacks.  We’ve walked over 300 miles since we began and our longest walk was 15.6 miles.  That was cause for celebration!

We’ve very fortunate to have several beautiful parks and state reservations to hike in New Jersey including Nomehegan Park, Echo Lake Park, Watchung Reservation and the South Mountain Reservation.  We also have been training on the roads around our house in the Poconos.  While not as picturesque it does have the advantage of better bathroom breaks and not having to carry food.

More on our training and gear in future updates.