On the road again

I'm happy to announce that I'll be getting back on the trail tomorrow (Sat. June 13th)!

The plan is to start at Delaware Water Gap (mile 1296.0) and head north to Katahdin. Easy peasy, right? We'll see! (Yes, this means I won't be thru hiking this year. I'm still toying with the prospect of heading to southern PA if I make Katahdin so as to complete 1/2 of the trail, but it's a big ask to have Mrs. Tedward keep shuttling me everywhere and I have to actually finish the first chunk first [NBD].)

I envision a problem with this though. Like most everyone else, during quarantine I've hardly moved. Forget 10,000 steps, some days I'm lucky to get 10 in! One thing pointed to as being a benefit of hiking northbound is that the first half of the trail prepares you for the rigors of hiking in VT, NH, and ME.

Perhaps I have a small leg up in being familiar with that terrain, but that'll only get you so far in an out of shape body! I worry that the ~300 mile trek to Mount Greylock won't be enough to prepare me for the serious elevation changes that come after Mt. Greylock. Also, I don't think I'll be able to do as many miles per day as I was pulling off earlier this year.

So I've done something I absolutely hate doing: I've planned the first 17 days of my restart. I prefer to be freeform about such decisions, but I also know that I will totally push myself too hard too fast after such a long layoff. So, I planned it out and I intend to stick to it!

I am planning on keeping the first week to about 10 miles per day. There's going to be a bit of variation based on camp site availability, but the 7 day average is 9.5 mi/day. The second week I'm going to be bumping that average up a bit to 10.9 mi/day. In essence, I've planned out a 174.1 mile section hike between Delaware Water Gap, PA and Kent, CT. 

I also kept in mind to surround longer day(s) with easy ones. For instance, on days 7, 8, and 9 I'm scheduled to do 11.5, 12.2, and 14.5 miles, respectively. Before that stretch I planned the easiest day (7.1 miles) and two sub-9 mile days after it. 

Before you hit the comment button about my equating mileage with difficulty, keem in mind that I'll be traversing the NJ, NY, and southern CT section of the trail during these 17 days. It's an easier section of the trail with only 33,680' of elevation change total. Before reminding me that terrain matters, please compare that to the 175 mile sections between Mt Greylock and Etna, NH (42,300') or Etna, NH and Grafton Notch ME (57,360').  

Anyways, I'm hoping that all this preparation will save me from myself. 

I know I'm going to start off with apparel that may be on the hot side of acceptable for this time of the year. Thus, I'm planning on leaving my super warm down jacket behind. I'm expecting I'll be making changes to my apparel as I get to MA/VT, so that's something I may have Mrs. Tedward send me in one of the mail drops.

Speaking of mail drops, I had planned out 6 mail drops