Tag: hiking

Post #2150: Jordan River to Skyline Drive hike.

 

This is a roughly 12-mile round-trip hike, with about 1500 feet of gain in elevation.

You start from the Jordan River Trail Head, about 60 miles west of Vienna, VA, just outside the Shenandoah National Park boundary.  I will call out Crest Hill Road — that takes you from I-66 to US 522 — as a particularly nice part of the drive, and an official Scenic Byway in Virginia.

You walk uphill on a series of trails, for somewhere around 3 hours, to Gravel Springs Gap on the Skyline Drive.

Then you walk back down again.

The slope of the trail is mild throughout.

That said, 12 miles is still a long way.  This took me just over 7 hours car-door-to-car-door, of which about 6 hours was walking.

 

Continue reading Post #2150: Jordan River to Skyline Drive hike.

Post #2147: Front Royal to Mosby Camp Appalachian Trail hike.

 

That plaque tells you all you need to know about this hike’s difficulty.

A cub scout pack did this hike carrying two wooden benches.  Or the parts thereof.

Mostly, this hike is just a walk in the woods, on a dirt/duff trail. About 1000′ of elevation gain over ~3 miles, but trail slopes are moderate.

This was a ~6-mile round-trip and about 3.5 hours of walking, but I spent some time exploring a few side-trails. Continue reading Post #2147: Front Royal to Mosby Camp Appalachian Trail hike.

Post #2146: Front Royal to Skyline Drive hike

If you have a hankering for walking uphill, this hike should satisfy it. 

This is a twelve-and-a-half-mile out-and-back.   This is mostly just walking uphill to the ridge, then walking flat trail along the ridge, until you get to Skyline Drive.  No views.  No unique features.  Just a nice steady climb.  For me, this was a bit over six hours of walking, with a car-door-to-car-door time of 6 hours 45 minutes.

You start from Route 522 outside Front Royal, VA, and gain about 1600 feet of elevation as you hike up the Appalachian Trail to Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park.

Then return, and so get your fill of downhill on the way back.

It’s a nice hike.

Warning

There was one spot where I genuinely had one of those “I probably should not be here” moments.  This was half-way up a tough passage, where the Appalachian Trail switchbacks steeply up what is, for want of a better term, an ancient and eroded cliff-face.

Three crossings of that boulder field?  Four?  I lost count, as I zig-zagged from bad to worse, in short order.

The fun came in two parts, for this stretch of the trail.

First, at some point, taking a breather on the uphill, I looked back, and said … that’s going to be dangerous, on the downhill.  Then I realized there was absolutely no way to get back to my car unaided except by going back down that trail.  And that looked unappealing.

If I’d known I’d be here, I wouldn’t be here.  That’s certainly the crux of the “oh shit” moment, where your thoughts turn from “I wouldn’t choose to be here” to “I really don’t want to be carried off the mountain.”

But in addition, you don’t get to see what’s ahead, on the trail, until you’re there.  That is, at the next bend in the trail — the next switchback.  Only then can you see around the corner, to see what’s up next.

And one of those corners was, I think, the ictus of my brief  “oh shit” moment.

Up was unappealing.  Down was unappealing.  It was not an appealing situation.

I stuck with “up”.  Obviously, I got up that brief cliff-climb.

After that, except for the rain, it was a lovely two-mile stroll in the woods.  During which I kept worrying about my ability to get back down that rocky passage.

I did, no surprise.

Just outside of Shenandoah National Park itself, the AT more-or-less climbs a little cliff face.  And you’d best be prepared to do that, or don’t do this hike.

Figuring that out, halfway through, was less than optimal.

In the end, it wasn’t a stopper.  But if I’d been in the shape I was in my earliest hikes this year, that could have been a real problem.

 

And I got to hike in the rain.

Not a complaint.  I am fond of hiking in the rain.  I don’t know why.

The rain was scheduled to move in slowly around 2 PM.  By which time, I should have been home.  But the rain showed up a few hours early.

The slow onset of the rain was pleasant, while hiking through National Park forest land.  It starts with the sound of it.  Maybe I was hearing raindrops, maybe it’s just gusts of wind through the leaves.  Whatever it is, it’s faint enough to ignore.

Wishful thinking evaporated when I finally got hit squarely by a raindrop.  I got to my destination — a parking lot on Skyline Drive — and pulled on a cheap rain parka.  After snapping a pic of the mile marker, I sat down to eat my last PB&J, only to think better of it, stow my poles, and start walking down the trail, sandwich in hand.

I don’t mind walking in the rain, but I’d prefer to go down that rocky passage before it’s all wet.

Which brings me to the critical subject of trekking pole tips.

Do you choose rubber tips or (native) carbide tips, for your trekking poles?

To test this, I deedled my trekking poles on my most recent prior hike.  (That is, one shoe off and one shoe on.)  One pole with the carbide tip exposed, the other with small rubber “crutch tip” on the end.

Near as I can tell, there’s no law against doing that.

I conclude that main advantage of the “crutch tips” is that that the poles don’t dig up the trail, when the trail is dirt.  That’s about it, around here.  The tips don’t seem to make the poles quieter, because the tips themselves are made out of hard rubber.

The main disadvantage, in practice, is that that “crutch tips” will slip on dirt when pushed at extreme angles.  Whereas, at that same angle, the native carbide tips stab holes into the dirt, and hold.

Which is, in a nutshell, also the problem with the carbide tips.  You end up poking 2″ deep, 1/2″ diameter holes in whatever soil is on the trail.  And those holes tend to cluster (e.g., at places where you step up or down).

For this hike, I put the “crutch tips” on.  I didn’t see a need to dig up the trail.  This wasn’t supposed to be that hard of a hike.

I took the crutch tips off — and went with carbide — on the descent of the rock passage just outside Shenandoah National Park, noted above.  Carbide seems to stick unambiguously better on rock, than do rubber crutch tips.

In any case, the climb down was far easier in real life, than it had been in my imagination.  I didn’t feel the least bit unsafe.  That said, safe passage here requires good ability to balance.  In hindsight, if I encountered something like this on my earliest hikes, it would have been dangerous.

 

Google Maps sometimes grossly understates hike distances.

Just putting this in, for the record, as it has been noted elsewhere on the internet.

Here, per Google Maps, this hike is 4.4 miles, one way.  The hike distance, per the AT marker at Skyline Drive, is actually 6.3 miles, one way, or 12.6 for the round-trip.

That’s a material discrepancy.

The commonly-offered explanation of that (Google Maps shows you point-to-point distance) is obviously wrong, and easily shown to be wrong. People will say that Google simply gives you straight-line point-to-point mileage for trails on its maps.  Here, the point-to-point was a little under 4 miles.  So that’s obviously not how Google arrived at 4.4 miles.

I suspect that Google shows you a sum of point-to-point distances the string of straight-line segments that, for Google Maps, is the trail. It just skips over any small-scale side-to-side variation in the trail, as walked.

In particular, the set of switchbacks belabored above does not show up on Google Maps’ version of this trail.  Nor do any of the many sets of switchbacks on this trail show up as wiggles in Google Map’s version of this trail. 

In hindsight, I think Google so grossly understated the length of this section of trail because this trail has a lot of switchbacks.  There are many nicely-done sections of switchbacks, keeping the slope of the trail down.  I think Google’s distance calculation more-or-less draws a straight line through features of that scale.  Would not surprise me a bit to think that the length of all those switchbacks adds up to more-or-less the discrepancy between the Google Maps estimate of hike length, and the actual on-the-trail distance as stated by the AT marker.

Conclusion

If I’d known how long this hike was.

If I’d known about that switchback-up-the-eroded-cliff section of the trail.

If I’d know it would be raining before I got back.

I probably would not have taken this hike.

If ignorance is bliss, I must be one happy guy.

Post #2145: Route 55 to Mosby Camp hike.

 

This hike is an out-and-back trip of roughly 10 miles, all of which is on the Appalachian Trail in northern Virginia.  It starts at the Appalachian Trail parking lot on Route 55 in northern Virginia, where Tucker’s Lane meets 55.

It took me about 5.5 hours of walking, or a little over six hours car-door-to-car-door, including breaks.

There are a few nice uphills, for the exercise.  But about half the total distance is flat, level trail.

It’s not exactly a walk in the park.  But it’s close.

Continue reading Post #2145: Route 55 to Mosby Camp hike.

Post #2143: Manassas Gap and Whiskey Hollow AT shelters hike.

 

This is a reasonably easy hike, with lots of level trail, starting from Linden VA, where the Appalachian Trail crosses Route 55.  Just enough uphill and downhill to make it interesting.

There’s nothing in the way of views.  Just a lot of close-in woodland scenery.  Perhaps the outstanding characteristic of this hike is the pervasive scent of honeysuckle.

Above, that used to be an overlook.  The trees have grown up, blocking what used to be the view.  So now it’s just a nice place to eat lunch.

(Edit:  Seasonal Tick Danger.  Some time after this photo, I flicked a dog tick off my clothing, picked up what was left of my lunch, and split.  Until that time, though, this was an idyllic, off-the-trail spot for lunch.)  The Tradition I was Taught holds that Ticks and Mosquitoes appear in June.  We get ’em two weeks early now, thanks to climate change.  Plan accordingly.

Some sections of trail were more-or-less running streams, despite the last rain having been days ago.  Glad my boots were waterproof.

But mostly, this was just a pleasant walk in the woods.

There was one hard stream crossing.  Big creek, many fallen trees.  It took a while.  But not a stopper.

Collagen peptides for post-exercise recovery:  A winner.

I did this hike in two days, Sunday and Monday.  Roughly 2.5 hours of hiking Sunday, and 5 hours Monday.  I hiked part of the route round-trip, went home, and hiked the rest of it round-trip, the next day.

Two weeks ago, that would have been unthinkable, for the simple reason that my hips and knees would have been too sore after the first day of hiking.  They were too sore for walking around the house, for the next several days after a hike.  I could not imagine going back on the trail.

Two weeks ago, I began eating an ounce a day of hydrolyzed collagen peptides.  That, after briefly reviewing the research literature on joint supplements.

Joint tissues (ligaments, tendons, cartilage) are primarily made of collagen.  The idea was that by eating collagen protein in bulk, I’d provide myself with the right amino-acid building blocks for collagen, in abundance.  And that, eventually, that should help my joints.

This is not a huge dose of this protein-derived material.  This is about as much collagen as you’d find in a pound of steak (figuring that beef muscle tissue is about 6% collagen).  Or maybe a half-gallon of Jell-O.  So, chemically, this is providing collagen amino acids at about the same rate as eating a pound of beef a day.

To put this in perspective, this ounce-a-day of protein powder is maybe 30 times the typical 1-gram (1000 mg) glucosamine & chondroitin joint supplement capsule.  (Acknowledging that these amino-sugars are different substances entirely from the chunks of amino acids in hydrolyzed collagen.)  Weight-wise, it’s like popping 30 of those daily.

I had no idea that a collagen-based supplement of this sort would help right away.  That is, help with acute post-exercise recovery.  There seems to be nothing in either the medical literature or the popular literature to suggest that this should occur.

But I swear it’s true.  FWIW.  I went from three days’ recovery for my last hike, prior to starting collagen supplements.  To now being able to hike on two successive days.

In any case, I went from a diet that was deficient in some of the key amino acids needed for collagen (e.g., glycine), to one that has an abundant supply of the right amino acids.  At that time, I went from taking three days to recover from a hike, to recovering overnight.  I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

I have no idea whether this ounce of protein powder will produce some long-run improvement in my joints.  But it hardly matters.  The short-run improvement has been so marked that I’m already sold on the concept.  I may reduce the dose, over time, but this is now part of my daily routine.

Conclusion:  A theory on why this has been so outstandingly effective.

Old people tend to lose muscle mass as they age.  As a result, ways to build muscle mass in the elderly have been studied extensively.  That body of research shows that protein supplements do not build muscle mass unless you also lift weights (or otherwise do “resistance training”).  If you take protein supplements, and don’t do weight training, the effect on your muscle mass is nil (or close enough to it).

I bet the same thing applies to protein supplements for your joints.  I’ll bet that this combination of protein supplement and intense, prolonged exercise is exactly what my joints need.  And that, as with protein supplements for muscle mass, it’s the combination of the physical stress and the dietary supplement that gives results. 

Addendum, early the next morning, my feet are sore, but my leg joints are essentially back to baseline.  The exercise-induces soreness in hips and knees is … gone, for want of a better word.  In addition, maybe some long-standing knee tendon soreness has been resolved.  But, for sure, this won’t cure everything.  A long-standing hip problem seems completely unphased by the amino-acid onslaught.  

So it’s not a miracle-in-a-bottle.  I’ll settle for half-a-miracle.

Long term, I never would have guessed that the amino-acid-mix of your proteins could affect joint repair this much.  There’s no question that this now becomes part of my diet.  But an ounce a day of this stuff is too much.  What’s the right maintenance dose?  I’m guessing one-third of that, but that’s just a guess, based mainly on 10 grams being what the manufacturer terms “a serving”.

Post #2141: Ashby Gap to Sky Meadows Overlooks. A rewarding hike.

 

This is a short, relatively easy mountain day hike with a some excellent views, a good workout, and nice trail.

It took me four hours car-door-to-car-door.  That was about three hours of walking, to complete the 6-mile round-trip, plus an hour for eating and looking at the views.

In hindsight, for me, this was a more-fun-less-challenging hike than the “direct route” to the Sky Meadows State Park overlooks, the Sky Meadows Piedmont trail.   If nothing else, there’s just more hiking “stuff” than you get from walking straight uphill, in a grazed meadow:  stream crossings, trees, and so on.

In addition to a less-steep slope and more variety in the landscape, this AT-based route gives you better views as you walk.  With the Sky Meadows Piedmont trail, the view is all behind you, as you walk straight uphill.  But with this longer approach, you get a lot of nice views as you walk along the top of the mountain.   E.g., your classic pipeline cut, from this hike:

 

The hike

Start from the parking lot/trail head just north of U.S. 50, at Ashby Gap.  That is, on the other side of U.S. 50 from your destination, Sky Meadows State Park.

Take the short blue-blazed trail from the parking lot down to the Appalachian Trail, and turn left.

This takes you down to Route 50.  Cross.

After you cross 50, and walk alongside it for a bit, then do the long uphill slog to the top of the mountain.  The grade isn’t bad.  I recollect that I did this without stopping.

I also recollect that the thrill of trudging uphill ran out long before the uphill did.

But the grade was moderate enough that I could, in effect, pick a slow pace and keep going.  Just breathe hard.  By contrast, the other access to the overlooks — via the Sky Meadows State Park Piedmont trail — is short steep climb, during which I run out of breath and stop a few times.  As do most, I think.  Or at least, would like to think.

 

Most of the trail is pleasant walking, with only the occasional rocky bits.

Around mile 1.5 or so, you start to see signposts for trails in and around the state park.  At that point, just follow the signs to the Whitehouse overlook.

You pick up the Ambassador Whitehouse trail in the middle of a large open area.  That takes you down to the Whitehouse overlook.  (On some older maps, confusingly, Piedmont memorial overlook.)  This land is not part of the state park, but is owned by the Piedmont Environmental Council, a trust of some sort.  The odd tableau, behind the wire fencing, that (as of this writing) you cannot access, appears to be mainly a paean to the founders of that trust.  I believe the overlook is currently named for Charles S. Whitehouse.

From there, continue on the Ambassador Whitehouse trail, then follow the signs to the Piedmont overlook:

If you want more exercise, walk down this hill to the visitors center.  It’s a stiff walk down, and a stiffer hike back up.  Or just turn around and hike back to your car.  (Or, any of several color-blazed trails in Sky Meadows park will take you back up to the Appalachian Trail.  I vaguely recall that anything that says “Ridge” will do that.  As long as you turn right (north) when you get to the Appalachian Trail (blazed white), you’ll get back to Ashby Gap.)

The hiker

The weather forecast called for rain showers moving in around 11 AM.  Then rain for the rest of the week.  If I wanted to take a hike this week, I needed a short hike, plus an early start, in order to be back at the car by 11 AM.  To avoid the rain.

My wife mentioned Sky Meadows State Park, for a nice short hike.  Lovely hikes there, but the 8 AM park opening time makes for an awkward trip.  Instead, I parked at the Appalachian Trail (AT) access, just the other side of Route 50 from Sky Meadows, and walked to the “top” of Sky Meadows, from there, via the AT.

This allowed me to start as early as I pleased.  Which plays to my strengths as an old guy, as I wake up early.  In any case, I left Vienna VA well before dawn (about 5:15 AM).  There was an orange-colored full moon, just setting, with enough cloud cover to make it look smokey.  Nice.  But consistent with rain in the forecast.

I-66 West was fast-but-orderly traffic.  I did my best to fit in with the pack.  By  Gainesville, traffic density had moderated.

Once you veer off I-66 — at 17 North, to Paris (via Delaplane) — things get downright picturesque.  On this trip, dawn was breaking, the clouds were rosy above a shadowed landscape of rolling hills and foggy pastures and creeks.  It looked like an illustration from a children’s book.

But I was driving.  This is not a good road for driving.  So I have no photos.  But it is a scenic drive, at that time of the morning.

In any case, I parked at the trail head around 6:15 AM.  Got back four hours later, around 10:15 AM.  The return hike goes about half an hour faster than the outbound hike, owing to its being mostly gentle downhill.

Can my joints take the abuse?

The big question for me is whether my leg joints can take the stress of mountain hiking.  To that end, I’m (quite rationally) eating an ounce of hydrolyzed collagen a day (the equivalent of about a half-gallon of Jell-O every day, protein wise.  I’ve gone through the details in just-prior posts.)

On the morning of the day after this last hike, I think I can say that providing an abundant supply of the amino acids needed for building collagen seems to speed the healing of my hips and knees post-hike.  I spend less time, in less joint pain, than I did with earlier hikes.  This morning, I pass my “ADL test”  — I can perform the normal activities of daily living without making old-man noises about my joint pains.  That’s new, and I attribute it to my new-found goal of eating an ounce of hydrolyzed collagen powder a day.  The reasoning and rationale for this are in just-prior posts here.

But it’s not clear that it’s smart to continue with these mountain hikes.  The jolting, weight-bearing exercise of mountain hiking is just the ticket for building strong leg bones.  Bones respond to that shock-loading by getting stronger.  Joints, on the other hand, simply wear out.  Maybe all I’m doing with this better recovery time is putting a smile on my face, as I hasten my progress toward debility and the need for joint replacement.

It’s a tough call.  But I do like to hike.  In Virginia.  In the spring.  For a whole lot of different reasons.

All said and done, I think I’d best hike while I can.  Let the long run take care of itself.

Meanwhile, I’ll do what I can for my suffering hips and knees.  First, good boots.  Then, trekking poles.  And now, a diet abundant in the amino acids needed to repair collagen.

Post #2140: Rod Hollow Shelter Hike

 

This roughly 8-mile mountain day hike is good exercise, but not much more than that.  It starts from the same trail-head parking as the last hike (where the Appalachian Trail crosses the steep, gravel, one-lane Morgan’s Mill Road, a few miles from Virginia Route 50).

This hike heads south on the Appalachian trail, to the Rod Hollow shelter.  There are no views to speak of.  But there’s a lot of uphill and downhill (2200 feet of elevation change), and a few nice creek crossings.

You have the option of turning this into a ten-mile hike, if you manage to get lost and end up backtracking on the trail.  Which I did, with the help of the not-so-friendly rattlesnake pictured above.

In a better universe, rattlesnakes would be Day-Glo orange.

Luckily, a rattling rattlesnake makes a lasting impression.  If, at some point in your past, you’ve managed to piss off a rattlesnake, and been rattled at, close up, you’re not apt to forget the sound.

If nothing else, rattlesnakes show that God has a sense of humor.  Why else would you create this poisonous snake with a high-decibel warning system, then fit it out with excellent camouflage so that you can’t see the damned thing?

The microphone in my phone does not do it justice.  Above, I had to amp up the sound to be able to hear it.  But even with the distortions, you can tell that this isn’t something you hear in the woods every day.  It sounds more machine-made than animal.

In any event, I heard this rattlesnake long before I spotted it.  That’s typical, in my limited experience.  It took about three steps for me to go from “what’s that odd noise” to “oh crap”.

In the course of those three steps, that rattling got a lot louder.  That’s how you operate the volume control on a rattlesnake.  If you’re having trouble hearing it, just step a bit closer.

Once I realized what I was hearing, I froze, and moved nothing but my eyes until I spotted the snake.  It was maybe 20 feet away, just minding its own business, sunning itself next to the trail.

We looked at each other, the snake and I.  Between the now-quite-loud rattling, and those beady little eyes, it was clear there was no way I was walking past it.

So I did what any red-blooded modern American hiker would do.  I took a quick video — because, you know, photos or it didn’t happen.  You will note that the video is brief.  In hindsight, I’m surprised I had the presence of mind to take it at all.

I slowly stepped back a few paces, until the snake stopped rattling.  Then bushwhacked a wide detour around it, and went on my way.

And managed to get turned around — I still don’t know how.

If not for the fact of this little wooden bridge, on the trail, I might still be walking south.  I knew I’d already passed it, heading home.  So when I came to it again, it only took me a few disoriented minutes to figure out that I’d been backtracking for some time.  And that, contrary to my first impression, space aliens had not somehow built a new footbridge, on the path back home.

Between that, and getting off the trail earlier, I think I managed to stretch this 8-mile hike into a ten-miler.  All told, it was 8 hours car-door-to-car-door, of which about 7 hours were spent walking.  So, my average hiking speed was something like one-and-a-third miles per hour.  The remaining time was spent eating, as I finished 3 big PB&J sandwiches, 3 apples, and some candy, in the course of the hike.  And wished I’d brought more.

I was pretty beaten down by the time I made it back to the car.  Which was part of the plan.  In particular, my knees and hips were thoroughly sore from the hike, and had been for many miles.

Does heavy consumption of hydrolyzed collagen protein powder help my joints recover from hiking?

To my surprise, the answer seems to be yes. 

My joints ached for days after doing the prior hike, to Hollow Brook Falls.  More generally, this spring, it seemed like the more hikes I took, the worse my joints felt afterward.   At any rate, after that prior hike (Hollow Brook Falls), there were a couple of days where I didn’t want to be on my feet, let alone walk anywhere, for the joint pain, particularly my hip joints.

But one day after this hike, and my joints are … fine.  Just a bit achy.  Not remarkably different from how they are normally.

The only change between last hike, and this hike, is that I’ve begun eating an ounce of this collagen-derived protein powder per day.

So, does hydrolyzed collagen help with repairing my leg joints, after mountain hiking?  So far, my joints say yes.

My wife has given me a better, if less rapid test:  Will an ounce a day of hydrolyzed collagen fix my fingernails?  I have thin, brittle, splitting fingernails.  Adding whey protein to my diet did nothing to fix that.  I now realize that whey provides the wrong mix of amino acids for building collagen and other connective tissue.  But hydrolyzed collagen protein powder provides the exact right mix, and in addition contains a good mix of amino acids for making keratin, the protein that makes up fingernails.  If I have obviously stronger fingernails in a few months, after years (decades) of brittle nails, I will attribute that to the hydrolyzed collagen protein supplements.

Edit, the next morning:  Answer, heck yes.  I expected to be in pain for days yet, after that last hike.  But here it is, the second morning after the day of the hike, and I’m fine.  Pain-free, or as close as my 66-year-old joints ever get. 

Instead of looking at to two or three more days of limping around, waiting for my joints to recover, I’m ready to go back out on the trail. 

Maybe that’s a one-off fluke, but I don’t think so. 

I now think my previous slow recovery was due, in part, to a diet that (accidentally) skimped on some of the key amino acids needed for rebuilding connective tissue.  Now that I’m providing those necessary amino acids in super-abundance, my joints recover from a day of hiking much faster. 

So it’s not unreasonable.  Think of it as a supply-chain issue.  I realize that, except for the nine essential amino acids, your body can re-arrange incoming protein to make all the varieties of amino acids that you require.  But that process has to be a lot faster, and so able to complete far more effectively for the available protein in the diet, if you feed it the proper raw materials from the start.

And yet, as with whey protein for building muscles (Post #2023), I expected this to take weeks or even months to have any noticeable effect on my musculoskeletal system.  For the simple reason that muscles (etc.) don’t grow very fast. 

I did not expect it to help materially with recovery from the wear-and-tear of hiking, overnight.  But it does.  Or certainly seems to. 

If anything changes to lead me to a different opinion, I will come back and re-edit this.  But as of now, this stuff gets an enthusiastic thumbs-up from me.  It’s now a permanent part of my diet, though I may dial back to more of a maintenance “dose” daily.

Conclusion

1: You are what you eat.

2:  Chicken soup is good for you.

3:  Eating an ounce of this cheap hydrolyzed collagen protein powder, per day, is like eating a half-gallon of rich chicken broth, per day, protein-wise.

4:  Better, actually, because the protein fragments are shorter — and so, more readily broken down into their individual (and absorbable) amino acids — than is the relatively intact protein in gelatin, in chicken broth.

If my body’s joint repairs had been held back from a lack of the right amino acids in my diet, that should now be decisively fixed.  This is vastly more protein than you would get in (e.g.) your typical dose of patent-medicine joint supplements.

It’s just a question of whether the resulting changes in my joints (and nails) are big enough, and consistent enough, that I can reasonably attribute them to this most recent change in my diet.

So far, the signs are looking positive.

Post #2136: Listening to my bones as I walk.

 

My hips and knees are still not ready to be back in action, after my last day-hike.

Three days after hiking, I walked around the block anyway, during a brief period of clear weather.  In part, I was trying to figure out what makes my joints hurt, and what doesn’t.

Pain can be your body’s way of telling you to pay attention.

By that metric, it was an instructive morning.

Lesson 1:  Don’t walk stiff-legged.

It’s an efficient way to walk, but probably not a good way to minimize impact on your leg joints.

Now that I’ve gotten used to using trekking poles, I realize I often use my (aligned) leg bones in the exact same fashion — as a temporary, rigid, weight-bearing pole, transmitting force from the ground to my torso.

As I stride, I tend to start each stride with a straight leg — with the knee tensed.  This lets the leg bones and joints hold my weight, for just an instant, with little or no use of muscle, to support my weight.

That, as opposed to walking with a bent knee throughout, resulting in a “bouncier” stride as the knee flexes, just a bit, acting as a shock absorber of sorts.

Mechanically, I think this temporarily-straight-kneed stride is an efficient way to walk.  A least-effort stride.  No wasting energy in a soft suspension (the flex of the knee), if nothing else.  But also, possibly an artifact of my days of being obese.

But I’m pretty sure this is a bad thing, from my leg joints’ point of view.  You will see all kinds of warnings about merely holding a static locked-knee position.  I can’t imagine that this issue somehow goes away when you walk.

This was particularly noticeable today when walking downhill.  I take my weight on my rigidly-aligned leg bones, just for an instant, to slow my descent down the hill.  Kind of jolt my way down the hill, ever so slightly.  Just as I would have used trekking poles, to slow my descent, but with bigger muscles and more force involved.

I shamble.  Like a zombie, but faster.   I shamble noticeably, walking downhill.  And that morning, my hips let me know that.

Worse, even if my stride were super-smooth, so that there was no jarring when my foot hits the sidewalk, there’s now enough looseness in my joints (maybe from age, maybe it’s always been that way) that, among other things, I can feel movement within the hip ball-and-socket.  Just a little bit.  When I do that.

Basically, those weight-bearing, lock-kneed moments are ever-so-slightly pounding the crap out of my hip joints with every stride.

But guess what?  If I try to do the opposite — make sure my knee is never fully straightened, letting the flex of the knee absorb the shock of foot hitting ground, putting a “spring” in my step — then my knees hurt.  Starting with, but hardly limited to, the patellar tendon/ligament — the big sinew just below your kneecap, that touches the ground when you kneel.

The pain never goes away.  It just moves around.

Lesson 2:  Joints have a lot of different parts.

Source:  https://drpeterwalker.com.au/hip-anatomy/

And all of them can hurt.

Seriously, the big one that that old people worry about is the articular cartilage, as shown above.  That’s what bears your weight, and once that wears out, the joint is toast.

But I’m sure that a lot of my joint pain is from bursa, tendons, ligaments, and other miscellanous musculo-skeletal parts.

For example, after this last hike, I recognized mild symptoms of baker’s cysts, that is, knee bursa that are so swollen they puff out the backs of the knee joints.  That makes the knees feel “stiff” or “full” when bent.  (The treatment and prevention is to wear an elastic knee brace.  Nothing exotic.  Just a fabric knee brace of the type for sale at your local drug store.)

Separately, a lot of the pain at my ball-and-socket hip joints seems to have nothing to do with the weight-bearing parts of the ball or the socket themselves.  It’s now all the other stuff around hip joint that hurts.  During flexion and after straightening up.  Whatever it is that gets flexed, in the hip, as you bring your knee up to your chest — that’s sore.  Bending over to time my shoes is a chore.

If nothing else, this an an excellent excuse not to weed the garden.  Bent-over weeding stretches those same ligaments.

As I noted in the last post, I’m going to start eating a lot of gelatin, or, more properly, hydrolyzed collagen.  The idea is as crude as this:  I’m eating the concentrated, purified extract of animal-sinew proteins, in the hopes of healing my own sinews.

Edit:  And that’s showing some promise, as whey protein — what I’ve been eating to keep up my muscle mass as I lost weight — is almost completely deficient in some of the amino acids that are key to building collagen and connective tissue.  Plausibly, by relying on whey for about half my protein, I’ve been skimping, for an extended period, on some amino acids that are required for building joint tissues.  If lack of that key amino acid has been slowing my body’s joint repairs, then substituting hydrolyzed collagen for half the whey should resolve the problem.

Source:  https://swolverine.com/blogs/blog/whey-vs-beef-protein?srsltid=AfmBOoqBdkyF6MHbkEmPtHoLpWL_K6ROO9C_I_-VV3PJUda-SnUQiHn1

Be that as it may, not every pain in the joints is from wear-and-tear on the cartilage.  There’s wear-and-tear on a whole host of items.

And every damned one of them can hurt.

Lesson 3:  Hops, skips, and jumps.

Hurt like hell this morning.  Takeoff is fine.  The landing is what hurts.  It sent a clear message, written in pain:  Please don’t do that.

But mountain hiking, on rocky trails, necessarily involves a lot of that.  In the heat of the (hiking) moment, that hardly registers. But with already-sore joints, there is no pain-free way to do anything of the nature of rock-hopping across a creek.  Anything with “hop” in the name is going to hurt.

I need to find a better way to stick my landings, without the pain.  No idea how.

But, at the least, walking on sore joints tells me I should avoid those sorts of jumps and hops when I am hiking, whenever I can.

Conclusion

At my age, it’s not clear that anything is going to make my joints happy.

But I’m going to try.  Try to walk with soft knees.  Amp up my consumption of (plausibly) joint-friendly protein.  Try to stick my landings without jolting anything.

Turns out, I like mountain hiking a lot.

Now I need to find a way to make it sustainable.  If that’s possible.