grand canyon rim to rim training plan

Of course, everyone is different, but if it's any use to anyone, I'm documenting my 12 week training plan here. I work full time and I'm a Mom of 3 kiddos. I knew I was going to have challenges with work travel and some early morning commutes. I also knew that I was going to have to somehow get some vert (both uphill and downhill) on my legs even though I live where it's relatively flat. Finally, knowing that the Grand Canyon is at altitude, I wanted to make sure I was ready for both the altitude and potential heat of the Box.

My approach was to mix running and hiking with 5 days of running per week. I only ran because I wouldn't have had the time to hike all of the miles in training. I did however force myself to practice fast hiking, especially on the uphills because we would be hiking a majority of the Rim to Rim.

Some heat-training happened by accident. I was in Houston a couple of times for work as well as Colombia, so I go plenty of heat. I also got some altitude training in Colombia. In addition, once a week, I did passive heat training by taking a hot bath after long runs. Luckily, it's known that passive heat training can also double as altitude training since heat increases blood plasma and hemoglobin mass.

I started my 12 week training block with a good aerobic base. I had been running about 20 miles a week at that point. I have found that doing at least one focused 30-40 minute strength and mobility session does wonders for preventing injuries. I do the same session every week and it consists of resistance band work, banded squats, dead lifts, assisted pull-ups and chin-ups, balance board exercises, Myrtle hip mobility exercises, core work and half pigeon stretches. I do this in my home, so I can do it any time of the day. In addition, I love to climb, so during this block, I tried to get to the climbing gym twice a week unless I was traveling. To reduce pounding on the body, I added a Zwift virtual ride on my bike trainer once a week. Biking feels so hard to me- I kind of hate it, but I know in the long run, it'll be important to use this type of cross-training to off-load some stress that running all of the time would cause.

To create vert in the flatlands, I basically went up and down stairs over and over again at the Princeton University stadium. I didn't enjoy it at first, but after a few sessions, I actually looked forward to it. I did single steps as well as double steps and I knew that the downhill would definitely be important given that the rim to rim has 4,800 ft of downhill. In addition, once a week, I added 10 minutes of going backwards on the elliptical to mimic eccentric muscle contractions that happen while running or hiking downhill. Finally, I did one hard stimulus of 20 miles that included hiking up and running down a 1 mile long hill, ten times. The idea was to pound the quads to get them used to the downhill. In the later part of the training block, I also started adding a few minutes of uphill treadmill at the gym. One last thing to note was that I practiced hiking with poles as much as possible since I knew I was going to use them in the Canyon.

I really think that I did the appropriate amount of training and all of the right type of training, because I did not experience any quad pain at all after hiking the rim to rim. I was able to do an 8 mile hike in Sedona the day after the rim to rim and later that week, I was able to run/hike 20 miles.

I truly believe that training is the best part of having an adventure on the horizon. Having the rim to rim to look forward to really motivated me to keep training, despite the challenges of finding the time to train. As I'm now post-adventure, I know I'll start feeling a little sad that it's over. That tells me that it's time to find the next thing!