Miles != Smiles

On the 9th, I did 24.7 miles to Brink Road Shelter. On the 10th, I did 19.6 miles to High Point Shelter. On the 11th, I did 23.9 miles to Wawayanda Shelter. On the 12th, I did 19.2 miles and camped on the edge of Little Dam Lake. On the 13th, I did 15.6 miles and camped at West Mountain Shelter.

So doing a lot of miles is not overly enjoyable. There is a sense of accomplishment to some extent but, besides that, I can really only see net negatives. My feet hurt more than normal and I definitely miss some of the trail experience. I suspected this was going to be the case but I figured the states of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut were going to be boring sections of trail so I might as well plow through them.

So far, this has not been the case at all. I did a lot of miles (at least for me) to get through NJ in basically three days. It was not fun and I still can't really remember much of the trail. I just moved along and miles passed by. This was exacerbated by the second day being incredibly rainy and overall miserable.

The trail in New York so far has actually been awesome. It is harder than I expected but not outrageously tough. There are a ton of quite steep ups and downs but they are all short. This makes the trail interesting and fun without the grueling climbs of the larger mountains in other states. This has forced me to slow down a bit. It is hard for me to sustain a good speed while doing steep climbs over and over again.

In addition to forcing me to slow down, it has also caused me to want to slow down and actually experience the trail. This doesn't mean that I am doing like ten miles a day, but it has caused me to do a couple days under twenty miles. I still basically walk from 8am to 8pm but I take more breaks and move slower. It is a beautiful section of trail but doing it solo means I might as well walk most of the day. I will still definitely make it to Conn. but I don't think I will make Mass. and I don't think that I want to seriously try anymore. I don't want to push miles through NY and miss what is turning out to be an awesome section. If the trail gets boring I might up my mileage but we shall see.