Outdoor Classroom: Preparations for Long-distance Hiking

Long-distance hiking refers to hiking activities that take place over a longer distance within one or two days, such as hiking 60 kilometers in 12 hours or hiking 100 kilometers in 24 hours.

Preliminary preparations and precautions

1. Physical preparation

Understand your own physical limits and condition, and prepare by training appropriately in advance.

2. Understand the lines

Understand the distance and road conditions of each section. Is it a cement road, bluestone road or hard soil road? Which places need to pay attention to traffic safety? Where are the supplies? Only by fully understanding these can you make more reasonable arrangements for the entire trip.

3. Equipment and Supplies

Can you handle long-term hiking with a load? Keep your equipment as simple as possible and divide it into essential equipment and optional equipment. Optional equipment that not everyone needs to bring, such as public medicines, spare shoes and raincoats (depending on the weather conditions at the time), etc. Essential equipment is essential for everyone, such as warm clothes, water, food and personal medicines, mobile phones, etc.

4. Choose shoes to prevent blisters

It is best to rotate two pairs of hiking shoes or sneakers with different textures and insoles. A larger size will be more comfortable to wear at the end. Hiking shoes are heavy and have hard soles, so they are not suitable for long-distance hiking on roads.

Crossing long distances on flat ground will inevitably cause extreme fatigue on the soles of your feet. If you have two pairs of shoes with different textures and insoles (such as lightweight running shoes, hiking shoes, and sports shoes), change shoes every hour and change your walking style frequently (a combination of walking and jogging), rotate the force points on the soles of your feet, make the force more evenly distributed across the soles of your feet, and mobilize more muscle groups in your legs to participate in the exercise, you will be able to reduce fatigue and pain and walk farther.

New shoes can easily cause discomfort in the feet and stimulate the formation of blisters, so when you officially participate in an event, it is best to wear the shoes you wore during practice. Experienced hikers recommend applying a proper amount of Vaseline on the back of the toes before putting on socks, or bandaging the toes separately with tape, or "trying to use adhesive tape and foam double-sided tape on the soles of the feet." Participants can try different methods during the practice and choose the one that suits them best.

Laces should be tied tightly so that the shoes fit the feet well. If the soles are thin, you can add an extra pair of insoles or wear thicker socks. It is generally better to wear sports shoes with thick and elastic soles. Hiking shoes are heavy and have hard soles, which can easily cause blisters after walking for a long time. The main reason why many people fail to complete a 100-kilometer walk is that they don’t choose the right shoes and their feet get blisters, so they give up. Wearing thick, dry socks can reduce friction between your feet and the soles of your shoes, reducing the chance of blisters.

Socks: Bring thick, dry socks as spares and change them frequently to keep your feet dry and prevent blisters.

5. Notes on Hiking

1. Hiking is a whole-body exercise. Pay attention to balancing your body and adjusting your pace by swinging your arms. Change your walking posture from time to time, such as combining walking and running, and jogging for 5 minutes every hour. You can rotate the stress points on the sole of the foot so that the entire sole of the foot is evenly stressed, and at the same time more muscle combinations can be used so that the muscles can rest alternately. Relax on flat roads and use your thighs to drive your calves. The steps are even and rhythmic.

2. Don’t chase others, go at your own pace. The best walking speed is to walk without breathing; don't walk fast or slow, run or stop at the same time, try to maintain a constant speed.

3. When you feel pain in your toes or soles, do not walk on only one side of the foot. This will cause localized stress on the foot, which will be extremely painful over time.

4. Keep your shoulders down and your back straight, and breathe deeply with your abdomen.

5. When going uphill, take a deep breath and lean forward. When going downhill, if you accelerate or run, lean your body back to lower your center of gravity and avoid falling.

6. Choose a partner

The pace of movement of people in the same group may be different, some people are used to walking faster, some people are used to walking slower. If the person who walks fast walks very fast and the person who walks slowly tries to catch up, the person in front may drag down the person behind, and the person who is dragged down may eventually drag down the entire team.

Similarly, if people who walk fast always wait for those who walk slowly, their physical energy consumption will increase and they will always feel that they cannot get warm enough to get up. This is a lack of coordination in marching rhythm, so when selecting people, it is best to choose those with similar pace. Those who walk fast should control themselves, and those who walk slowly should also speed up appropriately.