Charles Miske - Summit Success: Training for Hiking, Mountaineering, and Peak Bagging

S UMMIT S UCCESS

T RAINING FOR H IKING, M OUNTAINEERING AND P EAK B AGGING

2013-2014 by Charles Miske

W EEKS TO THE T OP OF THE P EAKS!

Preface

I began this project in 2012 after having discussed the fitness aspects of learning to hike and climb while losing 60 pounds and achieving many of the dreams Id had in my youth. In 2013 I compiled a PDF that I sent to several of my friends, and opened up for free download on my website, currently found at http://sevensummitsbody.com/summitsuccess . After about 200 downloads I closed the page and waited for comments to roll in. I was not disappointed at all.

After a summer of taking notes on the people who were out there actually doing it and making some good progress, I began rewriting this book. Since a few of the people I was writing for were doing their first Colorado Fourteener, I aimed the next version directly at them as:

C OUCH TO C OLORADO F OURTEENER T RAINING P ROGRAM

That was great and it actually gave me the direction for the book. If you notice that a lot of the text is about climbing a Fourteener, then keep in mind thats who it was originally written for. I have gone through it and changed up a few things that were too specifically about Fourteeners, but please keep an open mind if you begin to feel like Im forcing the Fourteeners down your throat.

As soon as I opened up the beta program for a select group of paid subscribers it became obvious that I needed to adjust the focus away from the Colorado Fourteeners and onto training for any mountain adventure and it became:

M OUNTAINEERING F ITNESS: B EGINNER T RAINING M ANUAL

This was pretty awesome for a lot of the human guinea pigs working on the program. I got a few minor complaints about it though, so I posted a survey and got a slew of responses pointing out that the word mountaineering seemed too serious and scared a lot of beginners away. From that series of exchanges the current title evolved, blending the best suggestions into what I now feel is the best title for this work:

S UMMIT S UCCESS: T RAINING FOR H IKING, M OUNTAINEERING AND P EAK B AGGING

That might be a bit long, and Amazon and Createspace might have a few little issues but we can overcome that, right?

I thought Id share this with you in case you have been following along on my Facebook Page at http://facebook.com/SevenSummitsBody and became confused at all the titles Ive been discussing with all of you. Otherwise, please go LIKE it and get involved in the discussions. Wed love to have you on board.

I hope this book is all that I have promised, and that you get the best training available in a book of its type. The primary focus is on the concept of Vertical Training versus Horizontal Training. I feel that the best success in the mountains and on the trails is through a mixture of the two.

When I was training for Elbrus Race 2010 I was doing a lot of Vertical Training but not a lot of Horizontal Training. I was pretty quick on the uphill portions of the trail but didnt have the endurance necessary to do the whole round trip ascent plus descent in as good a style as I wished. This was especially obvious on Elbrus in 2012 when I did way too much acclimatization hiking and wore myself out before I even got onto the mountain.

This training plan is the result of my own experiments on my own body. Please read it, and try to follow it as best you can. Im a numbers kind of guy so it might seem a bit heavy on the 5 th Grade math, but I explain it all in a fairly simple manner that most of my guinea pigs have been comfortable with. The best thing about it is that with a little bit of your own ingenuity you can fudge the math a bit and turn it into a 20 week or 12 week program. You can use my math to create the program that will work best for you.

I wish you the best success in using it. I have thought of that with every page I wrote. Thanks.

Charles Miske

My Story

Late in the summer of 2005 I weighed 220 pounds, mostly gained from working 60 hour weeks at a tech job. I attempted Castle Peak, a Colorado Fourteener with a road up to 12,000 good for 4x4 vehicles. I didnt summit, because I was really out of shape. I started out too quickly, since in my own mind I was still young and strong and fast. I got lost, lacked confidence on the rough trail near the top, and ran out of time. I didn't have a headlamp with to negotiate the trail in the dark. I was completely unprepared.

A few weeks later I did manage to hike to the summit of Torreys, another Colorado Fourteener. I camped near the trailhead, got a very early start, and allowed more time to go up. Sadly, it took nearly twice as long to descend to the trailhead as it took to get to the top. Going down was really hard on my body, which was quite beat up by the time I got back to the car.

This sorry state of physical conditioning was frustrating to me, because just five years before I had climbed four of the 14ers in one summer, and was among the faster hikers on the trail. I guess thats what happens when you abandon your fitness in return for success at a desk job. A long time ago I had a personal trainer certification. I had exercised off and on since I was 19. I had been a year-round bicycle commuter. I had run several 5K and 8K races and done well. I never even noticed that I had gained so much fat and become so unfit.

The next fall, 2006, after ballooning up to nearly 240 pounds, my daughter was born. When I looked at her little face, I realized that I had put my health at risk, and if I wanted to watch her grow up, I would need to make some serious changes, starting right that minute. I finally had the motivation to begin a fitness program designed to get me to the top of the mountain. With my love of hiking and climbing, I knew that if I were to focus on the rewards of trips to the mountains, I could sustain a program to return to the me I used to be. Over the next four years I lost 60 pounds, and kept it off for another four years as of this writing in summer 2014. That being said, I cant imagine gaining any of it back.

During my fat loss journey I started took up several sports and adventure activities. I've climbed rock and ice, on glaciers and couloirs. I've run on the road in 10K and half marathons. I've run on trails in 10K, half marathon and full marathon races. I successfully ran the Qualifier for Elbrus Race 2010, and finished in 5 th place for Elbrus Race 2013. I trained the 3rd place finisher for that race, one of my proudest achievements in training an elite athlete.

I studied a lot of different theories from articles by trainers, coaches and teachers. I experimented with several different training and eating theories. I have long since figured out how I could have sped up my progress quite a bit, and I know that in general you too can have the same results that I got, only in less time and with less wasted effort. In this book I will focus more on the training aspects of the program. If you want more information about how to lose fat quickly using proven, sound science please check out my other book, a food portion control program for fast, efficient, fat loss.

T HE 100 C ALORIE D IET P LAN

We began discussing this journey with a Colorado Fourteener. Let's start on the path to achieve that goal now, and if climbing a 14er is the carrot on your stick, then by all means, lets get you to the top.

Photo, next page, me at 235 pounds at the beginning of my mountaineering training adventure.

Disclaimer

Once upon a time I was a Certified Personal Trainer. Back then, around the turn of the century, I had been working as a Tech Support Manager at a software company. It downsized and outsourced just about everything but the sales staff. I had a little income teaching Kung Fu in my garage and had developed some private web design and programming clients so I didnt really need a lot more money. One of my family members wanted to become a personal trainer so I studied along with them, took the test with them, and next thing you know I was certified.