Our GokyoRi Trek Summary: September 2023

24 Sep

Trekking for me has been a short time affair, either trekking Angel Island near San Francisco or scaling the 600 meter Mission Peak (read here, here, here and here) in Fremont, USA. These treks always started with a comfort and ended with a comfortable car ride and home stay right after. This year, the notion of trekking has changed for me. For the first time in my life, I ventured into a multi-day GokyoRi Trek spawning over a couple of weeks. Lucky to be part of a fifteen people group that has a large number of experienced trekkers and a few novice people like me.

Preparations started as early as May 2023 and we started training for the trek. Trek training was a side stint to me, given that I was training for a Marathon that I ran less than a week before the start of the trek. However, a conscious focus on breathing, leg strength and endurance during the Marathon training really helped make the GokyoRi trek manageable.

The GokyoRi Trek trip started on 02nd September with a multi-hop flight from Hyderabad to Kathmandu.

The real trek started a day later from Lukla airport, one of the most dangerous airstrips given its location, elevation and length.

About ten days later, we are back in Lukla, having trekked for eleven days including acclimatisation stays on the way.

Those ten days made me to bond with the group members as a family, exposed my body to different weather conditions, fed my tummy with various themes of food, strained my legs in a happy way, made my mind understand the cultural and social elements of humans around us, and served my heart with breathtaking views of Himalayas. There are some painful moments as well, like missing out the last leg of the trek atop GokyoRi after reaching Gokyo Village, due to rainy weather.

In the next few posts to come, I am going to give the salient details of our journey. Stay tuned.

Why My Focus Is Shifting To Strength Training

21 Apr

For about two years, I have been running decently long distances – a.k.a half marathons and more. After taking a one year gap between my first half marathon in 2020 and second one in 2021, running a full marathon was on top of my list.

In October 2021, I ran my first full marathon. It is a local long run, not a timed running event. The preparation for that run was decently good and I think I ran it well. However, the next two marathon runs after that are not satisfactorily efficient. I didn’t focus much on my strength training during the training weeks of these two marathons and the impact is very evident.

This year, my focus should shift to strength training. The reasons are very trivial

  • Strength training helps to prevent injuries
  • Strength training can improve running form and efficiency
  • Strength training can help increase endurance

The next 16+ weeks are an opportunity for me to focus on Strength Training than running pace and/or running distances. Hopefully the time is ample enough for my strength training and I could see good results.