As I write this, we are just over 10 weeks away from this year’s Crossing the Canyon Grand Canyon Rim to Rim effort for brain cancer research. These past few months have been quite busy for me so I haven’t been training like I should for Crossing the Canyon. I have pretty decent aerobic endurance fitness, but not enough high intensity fitness to make the Crossing the Canyon the fun adventure it should be instead of painful slog.
Perhaps some of you are in the same boat? We have 10 weeks left to go, so I am creating a training plan for myself and wanted to share it here. Feel free to use any or all of it for your own training.
Two Caveats:
- Don’t do anything you shouldn’t do. You know your body, knees, hips, ankles. Check with a doctor if you have any doubts. You are responsible for your own health and fitness and I am not a fitness expert.
- We’ve learned over the years that Crossing the Canyon requires a different kind of fitness than an ordinary 25 mile hike might. The combination of altitude, descending first, and finishing with a really steep ascent make it uniquely challenging. The preparation for this requires training at an intensity that stresses your cardiovascular system until you are significantly out of breath, or basically what is called interval training.
Here is my plan for the next 10 weeks:
Monday, Wednesday and Friday:
Run 2 miles to a staircase, run up and down the staircase working up to 45 minutes to an hour, run home.
Tuesday and Thursday:
High intensity lower body circuit workout (see below).
Saturday or Sunday:
Long run or walk of at least a couple of hours at an easy pace for practice with food, water intake.
Lower Body Circuit
Each workout consists of four 7-minute high intensity intervals plus a warm up and cool down.
In each 7-minute interval repeat the 3 given exercises in the circuit as many times as possible. Stop when the timer stops. Rest 30-90 seconds. My plan is to be very tired at the end of this work out with my muscles feeling like jelly. The whole thing should take about 40 minutes.
Warm up for 5-10 minutes.
Circuit one (7 minutes)
20 Squats
24 stationary lunges (alternating legs)
Skipping rope 50-100 reps.
Rest for 30-90 seconds.
Circuit two (7 minutes):
24 Walking lunges
20 jump squats or sumo squats
20 Step knee ups (step up on a step and bring the opposite knee up high. Alternate with other leg)
Rest for 30-90 seconds.
Circuit 1 (7 minutes)
Rest for 30-90 seconds.
Circuit 2 (7 minutes)
Cool down and stretch.
Just to reiterate: The workout above I just made up. If I am having trouble with it, I will change it up to make it doable for me. I don’t want to be injured so I will err on the side of rest if I feel something bad happening.
I’m looking forward to seeing you at the Canyon. Thanks so much for all you are doing to prepare and especially for the fundraising you are doing to raise money for brain cancer research.
Warmly,
Maria