Trail Info! Success!

Good things come to those who wait! I finally got some trail mileage info for the Ohio To Erie Trail. I spoke on the telephone with Carolyn from Cleveland who is very knowledgeable about the Ohio To Erie Trail. She has ridden it on a bicycle with her husband and has a blog about her experience. She was very helpful. You can read her blog here: http://www.igotabike.com/ .

I got an email today from Jerry who is the executive director of the Ohio To Erie Trail Fund. He compiled a mileage chart for me over the weekend. The mileage charts lists distances between key points on the Ohio To Erie Trail. The trail is about 335 miles long. The good news is that I now know the distance of my hike. The bad news is the trail is longer than I expected. I will need to hike longer days to finish this hike in the time that I have.

Thank you Carolyn and Jerry!

17 Quarts of Water

If I am going to get serious about hiking the 300+ mile Ohio To Erie Trail in a span of 21 days I need to get in shape. I have already logged over 250 miles of hiking this year but I have not done any backpacking.

Today I got out my backpack and loaded it up with 17 quarts of water - four gallon jugs and a quart bottle. Add in some gear weight and the weight of my backpack and the total load was around 40 pounds. This is much heavier than I plan to carry on the hike but it is a good weight for training. I hiked 8 miles on the Great Miami River bike path in Dayton. I need to get my body in shape for carrying a heavy load on hard surfaces.

I remember well how much my feet hurt from all the hard surface walking when I thru hiked the Buckeye Trail in 2011. My feet hurt every day for weeks.

Tomorrow I hope to carry the backpack and do more miles.