Lately, I have been doing some hiking, well, more like mountain climbing. It is way different than mountain biking. I haven't done some hiking in a long time so after my first hike, because of using the different muscles than biking, my legs were really sore for like 4 days before I could go on another hike, it's weird though, I went for an intense bike ride up Black Hill while my hiking legs were sore, I could still kick butt on my bike, doing hard climbing and everything, then on the day after my legs weren't sore anymore, neither my biking muscles or hiking muscles. So, on the next day, I hiked up Bald Mountain again and I went up higher this time, maybe like 2/3s up the mountain, almost to the top though, I got 'til where there were snow. I started hiking up like 8 am and it was 28 degrees and it wasn't so bad, I didn't want to put too much bulk of layers on me because I knew I was going get my body heat up climbing up the mountain and I did the layering just perfect. I really liked the Camelbak Denali I ordered from Campmor, a $17 waist pack with a water bottle holder and a little pocket to put an energy bar, phone, and keys in. It's nice, it came with a Camelbak water bottle! Duke came with me and he had a funner time than I did. I took a lot of pictures of this hike, sorry I picked a crappy, cloudy day for this one.Pretty much I will be doing a lot hiking now, more like mountain climbing. When there's snow, I will put on snowshoes, and for the muddy hikes, all I have to do is go earlier in the morning when the ground is frozen. But I got to do some weight/body lifting this winter also. During the last two weeks, I have started on mostly core exercises because that is what I really need to work on. Then some body weight lifting, like push-ups, dips, plyometric jumping drills, and squats with dumbbells. The most important exercise I feel I need to do this winter are squats and core exercises. I have been doing some exercises on the exercise ball and it's pretty fun. The plyometric jumps are the funnest though, they make me feel like a kid again, plus, doing those are supposed to increase your hamstring strength by 44%, I think. That's what is so cool about winter, is to focus on strength exercises while there's a blizzard out there. Then get biking again when it's warm.
