Fitness is something that has been worrying me over the last few months. I don't mean aerobic fitness, that is something that will come will hours and days spent on the trail, I mean rather the ability of my body to withstand the rigours of the trail during the adjustment period. After 3 or 4 weeks I will know if my body will make it, but in that adjustment period I have to say I am more than a little apprehensive. At uni I was generally an active person, and although I was never the most athletic of people I was pretty active, and could generally withstand most of what came my way fitness wise. The last 3.5 years have been a different story however. During the last 3.5 years for the most part I have been sat behind a desk attempting to clear an inbox. A few months after I took my job I saw one of my sisters for the first time in a few months who greeted me as 'Fatrick', need I say more? I haven't been totally inactive during my time as an office bunny, but I definitely think I have lost my robustness. In the last 2 years I have run 2 marathons and 2 half marathons, so I know I have the fitness when I need it but following my last competition I felt a weird pain in my left knee whenever I went up or down stairs. At first I didn't think much of it. I thought it was simply a running injury similar to the shin splints I had when I first started long distance running, but this pain didn't seem to go away. This knee pain became a nagging worry for me as by the time this pain came along, I had already decided to pack in the job and have a go at the PCT, so I knew this could be a major issue. Oddly I had felt this pain before, one weekend in Manchester just before leaving for good when I went running in the Peak District so the pain wasn't totally alien to me. But even then I remember it being pretty debilitating so the thought of it recurring 2 days into a 5 month hike scared me. The biggest fear that I have about hiking the PCT is that my body gives up in the first few days/weeks of the trail. I reckon I have the mental determination to complete the trail, but if my body can't hack it there is not much I can do, especially if it breaks at the beginning. If I break a leg 2 weeks from the finish I'll be gutted, I'll know I've given it my all and have experienced the trail as much as I can, but I'll be infinitely more gutted if I break my leg 2 weeks after starting trail. After all that time and money spent planning the trip, and all that time telling people what I'm about to do, what happens if my body falls over and I can't go on? It is a very real fear.
After doing substantial research about running injuries and knee pain, and with a lot of help from my aforementioned insensitive sister (only joking Mags (well sort of, I'll never forget Fatrick)) I have determined that my knee issues are strength based. The last 3.5 years of my life have mostly been spent in an office chair at a desk in front of a computer, and during this time I have lost a good deal of my robustness, strength and general fitness, so I've started doing something about it.
Over the last 6 weeks I have been hitting the gym hard and focusing on strengthening my lower body and core muscles, and I've definitely noticing the results. I don't feel any pain when going up or down stairs, and I also went walking for the first time in ages at Fontainebleau with a fair weight on my back without feeling any pain at all in my knees, so I know it is working. I'm hoping that as long as I keep up the strength and stability exercises before the trail and hopefully during the trail, I should get through the first few weeks unscathed. Personally, I think that if I make it to Idyllwild without injuring myself, I'll have a pretty good chance of making it all the way to Canada.
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