Days 144 + 145

Day 144: Mile 1470.5 | Stealth Camp

I woke up at 4am and I couldn't fall back to sleep. My legs were restless but I was so tired still. I eventually fell back to sleep. In hindsight, I realize I should have just gotten up when I woke up. If I just got up and hiked I would probably have had more energy all day.

We started packing up camp at 9am. We were walking through Kent, CT this day and I was going to get my new poles, Miles his new shoes! We decided to push ourselves today. It was 12.5 miles to town and we wanted to get there fast. We had woken up a little bit late and didn't want to miss the open hours at the store we shipped our gear to. The terrain was mostly big hills. I walked through the pain to keep up with Miles, who was faster than me.

He kept us at a 4mph pace for the first mile. The average hiker hikes 2mph. It hurt that first mile. My lungs burned, my legs felt almost like they were about to go numb, my calves tightened up. Keeping up was so hard at first but eventually I broke through my wall. My legs stopped hurting and became these two strong elastic bands stretching and contracting off of my torso. The breathing remained hard but I held on to Miles' pace with all of my might.

We slowed down after the first mile but we were still cruising. Sweat was rolling down my face in large drops, getting in my eyes, burning against my contact lenses. After 3 hours I started having harder time breathing. I kept going anyway. I got to a point where I couldn't continue. My heart was pounding and I started getting light headed.

"I need to sit down right now," I told Miles. We sat and ate for a few minutes. I downed an entire liter of water and finished off an entire bag of gummy bears along with two packages of peanut butter crackers. In all honesty it wasn't even enough calories but I couldn't force myself to eat any more. My heart was still pounding. My legs, surprisingly, didn't hurt at all. My ears were ringing and I could feel my pulse pounding up my neck. We got back up and kept going.

We stopped one last time a couple of miles outside of town to eat another bar and then kept cruising down hill into the adorable town of Kent, CT. We walked along the road 3/4 of a mile to the outfitter. The outfitter turned out to be a nature tchotchke shop with an ice cream bar that sold overpriced fancy hot dogs. We got our packages from the register and ordered a couple of milk shakes with espresso shots. The milk shake was so satisfy on this hot day. The perfect reward for pushing myself.

I opened my new poles. This may sound weird, but they smelled so good! My old poles had this awful smell in their wrist straps from all of my sweat. These ones smelled like new shoes! The tips were so sharp and the locks were so clean! I'd never been so thankful for anything in my life. Miles opened his new shoes and left his old, very smelly, pair in the hiker box. You never know, someone may be desperate and just need to get to the next town on someone else's old shoes.

After our milkshakes, we got our water bottles filled up and then went to a Chinese food place up the road. This was the cleanest restaurant I'd been in on the whole trail. The food was fantastic. Not super greasy, the vegetables were high quality and the rice was perfect. Everything I put in my mouth in this town was super satisfying.

With full stomachs we made our way to the convenience store (the grocery store in this town closed at 6pm) and stocked up on whatever snacks we would need to make it to our next resupply. We were aiming to make it to Salisbury, CT where there was a small grocery store. The plan was to stock up there and make it up to the Massachusetts border and resupply again in Great Barrington. Resupplying so often sounds like a hassle. But it keeps your pack weight down by a drastic amount. This allows us to hike further and faster.

We happily left town with our snacks and hiked out into the dark. With fourteen day old contacts this was tricky for me. I had very little depth perception and the dry contacts kept slipping out of place in my eyes. My broken glasses weren't going to cut it for hiking and I only had two pairs of contacts left to last me until Vermont. They had been bothering me all day but it was ten times worse in the dark. I was looking around the sides of the trail the entire time trying to find a stealth camp spot so we could stop.

Miles loved the night hiking, though. He wanted to keep going. I felt bad, like I was holding him back, because I didn't want to keep hiking. Sure, he could have kept hiking and left me to camp where I wanted to, but he was nicer than that. He stuck with me, even as I complained about my contacts. We rarely night hiked. Honestly, I hated night hiking most of the time. You didn't get to see what you were walking past, you could only see a few feet in front of you, the night was silent and every noise was scary, plus I had a really hard time seeing unless my contacts were new or only a couple of days old. I suppose I was the reason we didn't night hike. And I realized it on this night. It made me feel bad.

As I was sitting in my guilt, we finally found a camp spot. We set up our separate tents and talked about tomorrow's game plan. There was a shelter exactly 26.2 miles away. I felt strong; despite mys till rapid heart beat, migraine, and ringing ears. I considered attempting the marathon. It would be my longest day yet. We decided to try to get up early and go for it. By the time I was in bed and ready to sleep it was 10pm. An hour past hiker midnight. I had a hard time sleeping, though. My heart was pounding in my chest still. My legs were restless and went through phases of cramping. I rolled over and over, trying to get comfortable. My sleeping pad started deflating with the cold air.

I didn't even think about how the cold air could effect how full my blow up sleeping pad was. All I knew was that my pad had deflated at least 30% and I was freaking out. Without my pad being inflated, I couldn't stay warm at night and it was dropping into the low fifties during the night at this point. I started kicking myself. Why didn't I get a foam pad? Why did I have to be weak and prefer a blow up pad? I got out of my sleeping bag and blew my pad back up. I slept very little.

Day 145: Mile 1482 | Cesar's Brook Campsite

I woke up to my alarm at 5. The pressure was on. I woke Miles up and we ate breakfast in our tents. I tried mentally preparing myself for the day, but with the little sleep I got the night before everything felt impossible. My heart hadn't slowed down at all. My legs were stiff. My eyes were heavy. I needed to go back to sleep. But I hated chickening out from a challenge. I felt like I'd been shying away from a lot of challenges lately: bigger miles, faster paces, night hiking.

I told Miles how I felt. That my racing heart hadn't calmed down. We decided that I would go back to sleep for a couple of hours. Starting later meant that we wouldn't be able to complete the full marathon before dark, though, so we had to forgo that plan. I laid down and finally fell asleep again. When I awoke again later I had a horrible stomach ache. I got up anyway, I couldn't stay here all day.

We packed up slowly and started walking. I hiked alone for a while and Miles went ahead. My body hurt terribly and I couldn't walk to fast because my already pounding heart would start moving faster and caused a pain in my chest. I started thinking that something might be seriously wrong. I had never felt like this before. Never. [TMI WARNING] I stopped after a couple of hours to go pee. That's when I realized I had gotten my period that morning. Just to compound my already crappy state of being. Mother Nature really had it in for me, I thought.

I finally got cell service on a hill. I called my dad, an EMT, and told him my symptoms. He said he thought I might have over-trained myself. It can take up to four days to go away. Usually, he said, they would probably recommend I rest for a couple of days with minimal active recovery. I didn't exactly have that option. I needed to make it to Salisbury at least to ensure that I had enough food. I started crying. I wanted to be at home in my bed with my cat so badly. Feeling sick on trail was by far the worst feeling in the world to me.

I walked on and plugged in a podcast. I managed to make it 12 miles. I had to take a lot of breaks, though. Breathing was hard.