Hiking season is nearly upon us and it’s time to start training up. True spring is at least two or more months away, especially for those of us hiking in the Rockies, but if I’m going to keep up with my husband when May gets here, I need to start walking more now.

Our miniature poodle Dory is an enthusiastic walker and can easily hike ten miles when she’s in shape, but she lost her endurance over the winter. Because she is so small, she doesn’t like to be out in the cold and snow, so she hasn’t been getting as much exercise lately.

Now that the weather is starting to improve, I want to make sure we get outside whenever we can. We are blessed with a lovely walking trail that runs right by our house, but I still find myself reluctant to get moving.

Exercise is not at all natural to me. It’s too much like work, so I try to find ways to make it more fun. I’ve decided to use the idea of a long through-hike, something that both interests and scares me, to set my training goals.

Dory and I are going to walk the Hadrian’s Wall Path (HWP). I adore the British Isles, and when I first learned you could hike across the country this way, I was entranced. But the real reason I’ve chosen it is that, as through-hikes go, it’s short.

The HWP is 85.3 miles long, but Dory and I will be walking 94 miles total. Our neighborhood walks are nearly flat, but there’s over a mile of cumulative elevation gain on the HWP, so I used Naismith’s rule to make the adjustment*.

We will take our virtual hike without leaving Colorado, and we will tackle it in stages. I’m going to keep track of the miles we walk each day with the goal of covering the full distance of the path in nine weeks. My hope is that this concrete if whimsical goal will help me to keep up with our walks.

I originally thought I’d get a paper map and mark off our progress as we walked so I could see us moving along the trail. Then I found a website that covers each stage of the trail in detail and decided I would use it instead. I can move from section to section as we cover the miles and also see pictures and read descriptions of the things we would be seeing if we were on the trail in person. It even includes elevation gain for each section, so I can adjust the mileage using my formula.

I am setting May 23 as our deadline. It’s Dory’s sixth birthday, and is just over nine weeks away, which will require an average of ten miles of walking per week. If we walk five out of seven days and take the longer of our two walks three out of five days, we can meet this goal. As the weather improves, we will probably get some extra walks in on the weekend with Kurt, making up for any days we might miss.

The big question is: will this work? I can be competitive, even with myself. So my hope is that a goal and a deadline will help me to get moving. But I’m guessing the real key will be tying this goal to a real hike and tracking our progress. That sounds like fun to me, and I’m so much more likely to do something I think is fun.

What do you do to motivate yourself to meet your goals? Have you found ways to make less than enjoyable tasks that you really want to do more fun? Please tell me about them! I’m always looking for more ideas.

*Naismith’s rule is used to estimate how long a hike will take and accounts for both flat miles and vertical gain. I applied the suggested 8:1 ratio to the HWP to find out the equivalent flat mile distance.