Training for a trek in twelve weeks

The hardest day of the W trek is about eight hours with 900 metres of ascent and the same down, in wind. The hardest day of the Jomolhari trek is seven hours over a 4,870 metre pass. The Laugavegur’s first stage is 24 kilometres with a thousand-metre plateau. These are the targets, and the Training Simulator works back from them to today with the standard progression for recreational walkers. Here is what the plan contains and why.

The long day

Once a week, at the weekend, a walk that grows from two hours in week one to the length of the target stage by week ten, with the pack you will carry. This is the whole plan; the rest supports it. The long day teaches the feet where the boots rub, the shoulders where the straps sit and the mind what hour six feels like. By week eight it should be on hills. By week ten it should be two days back to back, because the trek is consecutive days and the second morning is where the untrained legs fail.

The midweek walks

Two shorter sessions, an hour to ninety minutes, brisk, on whatever ground is available. One of them is stairs: a tall building, a stadium, a hill with steps, up and down with the pack. Descents are where trek injuries happen, and the muscles that brake on the way down are trained by going down, not up. Runners have strong hearts and weak descents; the stairs fix that.

The progression

Ten percent more a week, which is the conservative rate at which tendons keep pace with muscles. Every fourth week is lighter by a third, because adaptation happens in the recovery. The last ten days are a taper: the long day shrinks, the midweek walks stay, and the body arrives at the trailhead rested rather than tired. The simulator lays this out as a calendar with the weeks numbered from your departure date, and it moves the recovery week to avoid the flight.

Altitude is not fitness

The plan makes you strong at sea level. It does nothing for the night at 4,000 metres, which is decided by the rate of ascent and the rest days, as the oxygen field note explains. Fit people at altitude are the ones who climbed too fast because they could. The Training Simulator prints a reminder on the last page of the plan, and it is the reminder to read.

Gear is training too

The boots need fifty kilometres before the trip; the pack needs to have been carried loaded; the poles need to have been used on a descent so that the hands know the length. Every item in the Pack Simulator that will be worn or carried should have been worn or carried on a long day, and the ones that failed should be replaced before the flight, not at the refugio.