Post-Hike Update #1: A Time for Rest
As of today, it’s been three weeks since I completed my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.
This morning, I woke up as the first rays of sunlight streamed through the windows of our top-floor duplex apartment. I still wake up with the sun as I did on trail, though these days, I’ll often roll over and fall back asleep. Not today, though. Today, I decided, stretching under the covers; I was going to run.
Save a couple “test” runs on a treadmill hamster wheel, I haven’t been running at all since I’ve been back. The first time I tried to run, 12 days post-hike, I got maybe three strides in before both knees, my shins, and my left hip started screaming in pain. I slowed way down and walked for the rest of that workout, worry and anxiety bubbling up. Did I ruin my joints on this hike? How long will this last? If I can’t run, I’m not going to be able to maintain everything I gained from the hike.
Running and hiking are my main forms of exercise. Occasionally, I’ll get a wild hair and pick up a gym membership, or in my most optimistic moments, a yoga membership. But at the end of the day, running and hiking are what I enjoy most. I had, of course, understood that I wasn’t going to be able to hike in the same capacity after I got off trail. But if I couldn’t run either…
I swallowed my panic and focused on what I knew. I was no stranger to knee pain, and I knew that after the hike, my body had completely changed. In many ways, I was stronger - but running and hiking are very different, and I was going to have to listen to my body now more than ever. We were strangers, but I’d spent the last 6 months staying in tune with my body’s needs, abilities, aches, and pains. I could re-acquaint myself, and I could do this.
Today, I was able to run a 5k with zero joint pain, at a sub-10 minute-per-mile pace, and barely broke a sweat. A far cry from where I was just a week ago.
So, here’s what I’ve been doing to physically recover after the end of my hike. This is what’s worked for me, and it may not work for you. My hope that you’ll find my experience helpful if you’ve just completed a thru, still out there hiking SOBO, or if you’re planning on thru-hiking next year.
This is a Time for Rest
I’m writing this for you, but I’m also writing for myself. I couldn’t wait to see how fast I was going to be able to run post-hike. I want to maintain the fitness and endurance I gained while I was on trail. But the truth is: I can’t.
We can’t hike in the same capacity that we were. It’s not possible to stay in the same exact shape. Our lives and bodies changed when we started the hike, and now that the hike is over, they must change again. I know that by the end of the hike, I was thinner than I’d like to be - I was asking a lot of my body and I was burning way more calories than I could consume.
The reality of the situation is this: now that I’m no longer hiking 20+ miles a day, I am going to gain weight. I am going to lose muscle tone. That’s normal, that’s natural, and it’s also normal and natural to feel sad or anxious about it, especially if you’ve had a history of body image issues as so many of us have.
When my first attempt at running ended as quickly as it started, I took a good, long look at the anxiety that welled up. The expectation my mind had of maintaining every ounce of muscle wasn’t reasonable, or, honestly, healthy. So, I dismissed it. And I intentionally took time to rest.
Listening to your body when it needs to rest is so important, regardless of whether or not you just completed a thru-hike.
Move Every Day
Now, just because I was resting, doesn’t mean I was laying down 24/7 (even though it’s very nice to sleep on a real bed after 6 months of backpacking.)
Towards the end of my thru-hike, I was taking very few zero days (zero day = zero miles hiked.) This wasn’t because I was allergic to delicious town food or comfy hotel beds, but because I knew that for every zero, I was basically taking two days off. I would be sluggish the next day when I returned to trail - stiff, sore, fatigued. It would take me a good couple days to get back into a comfortable hiking rhythm. I learned that if I stayed active and kept moving, overall, I was a better hiker.
Drawing from that experience, I knew that I needed to keep moving, even if it was just a short hiker hobble to the end of the block and back. Now that I live in a walkable city, my partner and I take 5-minute walking breaks around the block throughout the day, and usually try to get a good 3-mile walk in at least once a day. We also live close to the coast, so beach walks have been a good change in scenery as well!
Supplements I’ve Been Taking:
Before I left to hike the AT, I was a copywriter for a marketing agency. One of our brands was wellness supplement brand, so I had to do a lot of research on the safety and efficacy of dietary supplements. Supplements aren’t a cure-all, and I’m certainly not cool enough to have any affiliate links for you. So this is purely me sharing what I’ve been using, since I think it’s been helping me - and I hope it helps you too. I found everything in this list at Costco, save Vitamin E, which I had to pick up at Walgreens.
Glucosamine. I took this at the beginning of my hike, when severe knee pain threatened to end it. This is a joint health supplement, and it helped me then, so I figured it would help me now. The body uses glucosamine as a building block for building tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and - most importantly, in my opinion - replenishing the fluid that surrounds and cushions joints. Taking it as a supplement is thought to help aid your body’s recovery of damaged joint tissues.
Turmeric + Piperine. Turmeric is a great alternative to NSAID pain relievers. I tried to stay away from NSAIDs when I was on trail, because if I was hurt, I didn’t want to numb the pain. I wanted to know if I was hurt so I could rest. Turmeric helps reduce overall inflammation through antioxidant activity, which then reduces pain. Piperine, or black pepper extract, helps increase absorption and bioavailability of curcumin - which is the main anti-inflammatory compound found in turmeric. These days, it’s pretty difficult to find a stand-alone turmeric supplement that doesn’t include piperine, but it’s still something to look out for when you’re shopping around.
Vitamin E. Years ago, I had a breast cancer scare, which was followed by a surgical biopsy that was thankfully negative. My doctor recommended that I take Vitamin E in a high dose for 60 days (they had me on a 1,000mg or 1500IU dose) to help reduce some of the inflammation in the area that was biopsied, in an effort to relieve the symptoms I was having. Vitamin E is an antioxidant compound that, when taken in high doses, has been shown to have an anti-inflammatory effect by reducing cytokine production. Without getting into the gory details, taking it helped reduce the symptoms I was having then, so I figured it would be a good idea to start taking it daily, in lower doses, for overall anti-inflammatory and antioxidant support.
Multivitamin. Ah, the humble multivitamin. If you’re a thru-hiker, you know that we all ate like garbage when we were living in the woods. Macros? We don’t know her. I took multivitamins throughout my hike in a halfhearted attempt to keep my nutrient levels in a healthy range, and I’ve continued taking them post-hike to help give my body everything it needs to recover.
Things I Want to Do Better:
There are a lot of things I thought I would be doing to recover post-hike, that I haven’t gotten around to. As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to have a daily yoga practice. For some reason, I’m not great at maintaining one. I’ve hit the mat precisely zero times since I’ve been back in the real world, despite knowing that it would be one of the most helpful things for me right now, both mentally and physically.
Another thing I’ve historically been terrible at is drinking water. I went from drinking 4-5 liters a day while on trail (and even more in the heatwave we survived from Pennsylvania - New York), to drinking… mostly coffee. There’s water in coffee, right? As I write this, there’s a coffee mug and a water bottle sitting on my desk. Guess which one is still full?
Listen to Your Body
The point of this post isn’t to give you a shopping list or tell you what you need to be doing to recover after your thru-hike. At the end of the day, all I can do, and all anyone can do, is share their own experience. Each one of us became an expert in our bodies’ abilities; we knew that 25.3 miles was doable in a day, but 25.4 miles would hurt that one tendon on the outside of our left ankle. Trust your hard-earned wisdom, and keep having that conversation with your body.
If you thru-hiked this year, or have thru-hiked in the past, what helped you recover? Let’s start a conversation in the comments below:
