It is a mental and physical game.

Getting pumped while doing all this training! I know that with each step I am getting closer to my AT adventure. SO STOKED!!

Completing a thru hike, regardless of how long and where, is a physically and mentally demanding task. You are constantly on your feet and on the move for long distances, the terrain can be challenging, the weather may seem like it never wants to work with you, and during this entire time you maybe missing people back home while having thoughts of self doubt slowly creep into your head. How do you prepare for the onslaught of so many unknowns? For me, preparation is key. Being prepared physically by training hard and being prepared mentally by controlling as many of the aspects of the trip that can be controlled through good planning will help give you the confidence needed to complete this adventure. This will make you less likely to “tap out” when those feelings of self doubt creep in.

Planning all my mail drops and resupply towns along the trail. This may be going a little over board, but knowing when and where my food will coming to me greatly helps my mental confidence.

When it comes to survival, there is the survival rule of 3 and it goes as follows: You cannot survive 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. I like to add a fifth rule to that when I am talking to students about being in the backcountry for the first time and that fifth rule of three is you cannot survive 3 seconds without a positive attitude. Now it could be argued that an Appalachian Trail thru hike is not a do or die survival situation, but in reality it can be. As a thru hiker you are living on your own in the wild for 5-7 months, so the above survival needs need to be met in order to have a successful hike. You need to be concerned about whether your clothes will adequately protect you from the weather, if your shelter is good enough to protect you while you sleep, where to secure water, and how you are getting your meals and is the caloric intake enough to sustain you. Physical fatigue aside, being prepared to tackle your survival needs will go a long way towards a person being mentally prepared for a long thru hike. Physical fatigue will happen, that is inevitable, but add some physical training to your preparations so your body is ready, and both your physical and mental preparedness will greatly increase your chances of making the entire 2,200 mile journey.

My physical workouts have been very basic. Since this is a hike (essentially a long walk), my workouts have been just that, walking. I have not lifted any weights or gone to a gym. I have weighed down my Hyperlite pack with weight and I hit the trails. I will do steps and do trail runs to get ready. One important part for me is doing these workouts on actual trails. I want the same terrain changes that are going to happen on the AT to happen on my workout. I am doing much more than getting my legs strong, I am getting my feet ready for what is going on underneath them, I am preparing my ankles and knees for some uneven and loose ground, and I am getting the feel for my pack with weight on my back and hips while navigating rocks and steps. Working out in a gym or walking just on a flat track does your entire body a disservice in my opinion. Yes, going to the gym and running around a track will work on strength and endurance, but the flat and consistent surface is not something a hiker is going to encounter in the mountains. In reality though, how can one prepare physically for 15 mile hikes everyday and all day for six months? It seems like a monumental task.

The steps I have been running up and down two days a week with my weighted pack. As a stretch to start, I take a small hike to warm up and I then take the same small hike to cool down when I am done.

Part of my preparedness is making a bunch of spreadsheets with various things listed. I have a spread sheet looking at my gear list (shown below), food list, money, and resupply. The gear list has everything I own as far as outdoor gear organized into different categories as well as information on the weight of the item in ounces. I am trying to keep my pack weight as light as possible, so doing this along with the Lighter Pack website helps a lot. The food list organizes food by meal category and has very important health information like protein, fat, and calories the item has. For this trip, it is important to have a goal for the amount of calories I will need to intake daily in order to give my body the fuel it needs everyday. My goal is to consume 2,000-4,000 calories a day, so knowing what is going in my body will be very important. The money tab in this spreadsheet is my budget for this trip, How much I have spent thus far more importantly how much I still have left to spend. Knowing this allows me to be flexible with purchasing food and snacks when I go by a town or resupply place. Then there is the resupply tab (above) which lists places to buy items, get mail drops along the way with the addresses of those places, and important miles and notes on each place. This tab is as much for me as it is for family and friends that plan on sending items to me along the trek. I have been using my Farout app with the Guthook's AT Guide on my phone in conjunction with the Official Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker's Companion book by The Appalachain Long Distance Hikers Association to plan all my resupply mail drops and towns I will go into to resupply. Both also have water sources, shelters, campgrounds, and hostels along the trail as well. Guthook's map is interactive and every marker on the map has comments that have been posted from other hikers about that stop including recommendations on places to definitly go and those places to avoid. If anyone is contemplating a thru hike on the Appalachian Trail, those two resources I strongly recommend to help you plan and prepare.

Maybe a little bit of an obsession at this point, but here is my gear list of all the outdoor hiking gear I own. I am using this in conjunction with the Lighter Pack website to help me keep my pack weight down to as lite as possible, while making sure I am packing just enough to survive the elements of mother nature.

The Official Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker's Companion by The Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association (ALDHA) is an excellent book to have out there. I am going to have this with me at all times on the trail along with the Guthook's AT Guide on the Farout app. These colored tabs are places where I can purchase resupply items (yellow post-its) and places that allow mail drops (orange post-its.)

For those looking to plan their own AT adventure, here is a list of the resources I used to help me plan:

• Farout app on my iPhone, I then purchased the Guthook's AT Guide. At the time of purchase, the app was free from the App Store. Guthook's AT Guide cost $60.

• https://lighterpack.com/welcome helped me with my packing. You can set up categories, organize items, and you can put in weights of items for the website to total for you. Very helpful since on a thru hike you are trying to keep your pack weight as low as possible. Cost of using this website is free.

• Official Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker's Companion book by The Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association. Vital to helping plan. It works like the Guthook AT Guide, but it is in paper form and lists everything from the start of the hike to the end. It gives great information like the distance traveled, the distance until Mt. Katahdin, and distances between next points along the trail. It also will give details on towns and certain stops along the way. This will be going with me in the field along with my phone. The beautiful thing about this book, I do not need to worry about cell service in order for this to work!

• I also used this website a lot, https://thetrek.co/ . They have a lot of great information, including surveys that have done with past thru hikers. A wealth of information is here, go on there and surf around. They have information on other thru hikes as well like the Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, The Colorado Trail, and Arizona Trail.