Faster, Longer, Heavier

When Joe and I traveled to Spain and Portugal a few years back, we met a group of Australians that we spent some time with. One of them talked about a rowing coach he had that would constantly repeat to them "long, hard, deep and often" as his mantra for their rowing. While that doesn't entirely fit with our hike this week, our own mantra might be "Faster, Longer, and Heavier." Or maybe I just wanted a chance to talk about how cool those Australians were.

Anyway, this week we returned to our most consistent trail: Issaquah High School TH to Poo Poo Point. And we went all of the way to Poo Poo point for once. After being away from this trail for 3 weeks it was nice to return. I was amazed by how much a forest can change in that time, as the trees were budding and flowers were starting to come out. The feeling of spring was in the air and it's even more motivating to get into better shape as we get closer to our actual hike.

This week we all strapped on our real packs, with real supplies, and headed out. Joe's pack weighed in at a whopping 39 pounds, possibly heavier than he will want to be on the real trail. John weighed in at 29 pounds of weight, while Sean had to head to work before we purchased the scale to weigh the packs but was most likely near John's weight. With all of this weight added to our backs we would have hoped to only keep our pace from previous excursions up this trail. That would show progress, we are able to get up the 3.5 miles to the top of the mountain in the same time but with more weight. Instead, we blew the previous time out of the water. Cutting 12 minutes off our most recent jaunt up this hill, and doing it with our real packs, made us all feel quite accomplished.

We were also able to make it to the actual Poo Poo point viewpoint for the first time. From this viewpoint, many paragliders take off and glide down the mountain. And now that we have been there we can tell you why. The view is stunning from this high point with a near cliff shooting down for a few hundred feet. From the top we could see downtown Bellevue, Issaquah, and Tacoma. We also could see to Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier. Very rewarding end to the climb, and a view we highly recommend (you don't have to hike it, you can drive to the viewpoint).

With that, we headed back down and completed our 8+ mile hike in just over 3 hours. We are making progress and getting faster, walking longer and carrying heavier packs.