r/BackpackingDogs

So this is my dog, on our evening run in our 'back yard', in his happy place. So obviously this is me in my happy place as well :)

After moving to another village, I couldn't get into the rhythm of working out anymore. I used to go to Crossfit 3-4 times a week, but there isn't any around here, signed up for Hyrox, but the atmosphere is too competitive, and quite intimidating so it just didn't really work out.
So after 1,5 years of not doing 'anything' I ended up asking my brother if he was up for a run 31st of January 2027, a trail run, at my home town (he's a runner, doing (half) marathons and recently picked up trail running). So here we are. We've committed to a 16km run in 7 months time. Finally this gave me the motivation to go out.

What it showed me already:

• happy relaxed and super chill walk-runs: i do an evening walk and just decide to go run most of it. I can keep up a long time being around 135-150bpm (max HR is 186). I stop because of small sensitiveness in knees, or just because my dog is taking a look time sniffing around, or i see a nice bird.
• Suprised and REALLY HAPPY that this is just equally, even more, fun than just hiking. I'm huge fan of hiking. And I live in the middle of nature, at the beach. This is just adding so much more hapiness to my daily walks. I really really can't believe i'd never ever thought to do this earlier on...
• Surprised my (thru)hiking background adds a lot already: ankle stability, not afraid to just place my feet anywhere, trust in the movement, and i guess also a bit on endurance.
• I even attended Hyrox workouts twice weekly. Now I have some 'external' motivator, and told myself it's ok to pace these workouts, I'm able to motivate myself and find it lots more enjoyable

I'm going to continue on my happy relaxed walk-runs until I notice knees and all the other parts of my body really get used to the longer distances, and then probs will start with a bit of a more structured training, but really, maybe I just continue on like this.

Thanks for all the inspiration on this sub! Hope to be back end of Jan. with a report of my first ever trail race :D

Chewie hits the trail for a few days circling around the Kaiser Wilderness. Swim and snow fun! The southwest portion was heavily damaged by the 2020 Creek Fire and made hiking challenging hoping over the thousands of downed trees.

Me, my GF and our Golden Retriever just got back from a one nighter right at 2200m (7200ft) underneath Pizzo Tre Signori, in the Italian Alps.

The hike up from Premana was fairly simple (1400m - 4600ft) and we managed to dodge a storm that hit as soon as we reached FALC hut. One hour later the sky cleared out and the sun dried everything out so we pitched with ease. We enjoyed the sunset view right on the valley below and cuddled while singing karaoke on our Spotify offline playlists (we made sure no one else was around) 😂

The next day we hiked down closing a loop that went up and down through the southern ridge of the valley. We stopped at S. Rita hut for coffee+cake and Ariaal hut for lunch.

We had 27km (16.7mi) under the belt and our feet were sore as we are still getting used to the extra weight for the 3p tent, dog food etc., but totally worth it. Working towards building up some more resistance and we will be off for longer trips.

Sunsets like these make up for at least 50% of the reasons why we do this ❤️