The Hike

In 2007, I was working for a now defunct, local bank. I was working with a close friend of mine at the time- she happened to be my direct manager. An opportunity presented itself within the bank (since they were a sponsor) to do a hike. The Joanne Woods March for Mammaries. It was a charity that I wanted to be a part of since they donated every single penny that the hikers raised to The Breast Cancer Fund of Central Arizona. There wasnt any administration fees, overhead, etc. They had the sponsors cover the food and drinks at the "B'rest Stops". There were two options, a 4 mile hike (that was pretty much straight up) or the other hike, which was 15.4 miles long. My friend and I said, "Psha, we'll do the 15 mile hike". We signed up back in October and the hike was scheduled the first week of March. PLENTY of time to train (mind you, I was still about 180lbs then).



Did I end up training for the hike the way I should have? No. I was still walking/jogging/running sporadically. This was right before the big crash in the market, so I was sometimes working from 6:45am to 7pm when I got locked out of the system and some Saturday mornings to boot. Our department was constantly busy. My now ex husband worked in the Lock Desk, so he wasnt able to leave for the day until all the locks that were faxed in by the cut off time were entered in for the day. Since we worked so far away from home, this didnt really lend to lots of training time since some days we werent home before 8.

The day of the hike came up pretty quickly. My friend came over the night before, she spent the night and my ex husband took us to the site. He was pretty convinced that we werent going to finish. He offered to hang around the site so WHEN we quit, he'd be able to take us home. I told him to get lost and to come back when the hike was done at 1.

We got on the trail a few minutes before 6am. It was a gorgeous day; cloudy, occasional pitter patter of rain. We started out by talking to each other. No better time like the present to catch up, its not like we're on a break at work you know? Off we go. The first few miles were easy. Then, it started getting difficult. Both of us hadnt really trained the way we had talked about. Family obligations, work, etc. All of it affected the training. We got to probably mile 7 and we werent talking anymore. Her Army training kicked in and she was in boot camp mode. She was a little in front of me and I was just chugging along. I caught up with her. Both of us said there was no way in hell we were giving up. We would do it or the rovers on the bikes would have to carry us out. We were laughing together about these little old bittys behind us. They looked like they were in some speed walk training senior session at the local mall. They were talking about random things, but loud enough for us to hear them. My friend nudged me and said, "they're catching up to us". Bull, I thought. I turned around and I'll be damned if these ladies are right at our heels. Before we knew it, they had passed us. . . and moved so far up the trail we couldnt see them any more.

We started getting to about mile 10 and both of us were hurting. Bad. I had brought 6 liters of water with me and by this time, stopping to pee was a pain. Literally. I was afraid if I stopped moving and crouched behind a cactus to pee, that I'd either end up with a buttcrack full of dirt or not be able to command my thighs to stand upright again. I waited until about mile 12 to pee. By this time, both of our legs were working autonomously, robotic. The stride was painful. The sun was out now, we had no sunscreen and the moleskin on the back of our heels had long since shoved its way out of the sock. We were out of snacks, out of "B'rest Stops". It was just us.

We were the last two people to cross the finish line. It took us some 6 odd hours to do it. But you know what? We did it. I won't lie. We immediately got a sandwich from the snack tray on the way out and ate it like we were starving hostages. We didnt even make it out to the main road before my friend was snoring in the back seat. It took me about 5 minutes longer and I was out. I got home and showered. I got in bed and slept from probably 3pm until the next morning. And boy, howdy was I hurting then. All I wanted was bananas for the potassium. It was hard to pee, because that meant I'd have to get to the sitting position and my thighs fought me on that. I had taken Monday off which was a good thing, because I still couldnt move. It was my lesson for not training.

But, I did learn a very valuable lesson. Determination. There was no way I would NOT finish that hike. Why? Because people sponsored me. Also, because my ex husband didnt believe we could do it. I dont know where we found the fortitude or sheer strength, but the both of us did. And we both crossed the finish line.

The moral to this story is very simple. If you tell yourself you can't do something, you're absolutely right. You won't.

 But, if you push yourself you just might be surprised at what you can accomplish.