Who This Is For and Who It Isn't
Let me save you some time and some money.
This class is for people who can walk to the end of their driveway and back without real trouble, and who'd like to get to the point where they can walk up a canyon trail for an hour or two and enjoy it instead of surviving it. That's most people. You don't need to be an athlete. You don't need your sunday best. You need two working legs, a decent pair of shoes, and a willingness to go slow at first.
It's not for someone who wants a bootcamp, and it's not for someone who's never walked further than a parking lot and wants to start on the steep stuff up American Fork Canyon. Both of those are the wrong door. If you want intensity, there are other classes in town that will give you that, and give it to you honestly. If you're just starting to move again after a long stretch of not moving, that's wonderful, and I mean that, but start on the flat paved trails near the rec center for a month first. Build some base. Come find me after.
I'm also going to be straight about the other end of things. If you've got a heart condition, uncontrolled diabetes, a recent surgery, or anything your doctor would raise an eyebrow at, talk to your doctor before you talk to me. I'm not a medical person. I'm a guy who walks a lot and pays attention. I can tell you how to plant your foot on a downhill and how to know when you've gone far enough. I can't tell you whether your body is ready, and I won't pretend otherwise.
Here's what "ready enough" actually looks like, practically, at home, this week:
Walk your neighborhood four times this week. Doesn't matter the time of day, though I like the cold mornings better, you don't have to agree. Walk far enough that you're breathing harder than normal but can still talk in short sentences. If you can do that four days in a row without your knees or your back telling you otherwise, you're ready for the first trail we'll do together, which is a mild grade with a turnaround at the halfway point, no exceptions the first time out.
Get shoes with some tread and some ankle support, doesn't have to be expensive, but not flat canvas sneakers. And do yourself a favor and buy one pair of wool socks. I won't harp on this all course, but I'll say it once clearly here: cotton socks get wet and stay wet, and wet feet on a cold morning in this canyon air is a miserable, avoidable thing. I own eleven pairs of wool socks. Maria thinks that's excessive. I think it's the cheapest insurance you can buy for a Saturday morning.
Bring water even for a short walk. This is dry air and we're sitting around 4,600 feet, higher once we're up the trail, and people underestimate how fast that adds up. I'll talk more about water next time, because I have a story about running out of it that I'm not proud of.
Now, about who comes along with you. This class works fine for a spouse, a friend, a parent you're trying to get moving again. It also works for kids, with one honest caveat: kids are going to complain for the first mile no matter what you do, and that's just the toll you pay to get them out there. My grandson spent an entire first mile telling me this was the worst idea I'd ever had, and then he found a snake skin near a rock pile and talked about nothing else for a week straight. The complaining is real. So is the snake skin. Bring the kid anyway, just don't expect gratitude on the way up.
One opinion I'll plant here early, because it shapes everything else we do: steady beats fast. I would much rather see you finish the whole trail at a pace that feels almost too slow than watch you sprint the first half mile and run out of gas before the turnaround. Nobody hands out medals for how fast you got to the halfway point. The whole trail is the assignment, not the first stretch of it.
If you read all that and thought, that sounds like me, good. That's exactly who this is for. If you read it and felt a flicker of "that sounds like more than I bargained for," that's useful information too, and there's no shame in starting smaller first and joining us in a few months.
Before next time: get those four neighborhood walks in, and if you don't already own real socks for this, that's the one purchase I'll actually ask you to make before day one.