Old Folks Daily Mileage

[JJ505]

I'll throw in that there appears to be a big difference between 60 and 69. "In your sixties" is quite a range, and I know I'm right at the cusp of it. At a relatively young 60 (just hiked 57 fun miles in two days last month), I have a pretty good feeling things will be different in nine years looking at 70. My buddy in his early seventies has been slowing down a bit the last few years.
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Yeah I definitely agree with this. I'm 69, I very much feel a difference from 60. It's not that I'm not as fit, but I think speed of repair is just not the same. I'm not a thru-hiker, but I'm sure it would be a factor, if I were.

[Wyoming]

I'll throw in that there appears to be a big difference between 60 and 69. "In your sixties" is quite a range, and I know I'm right at the cusp of it. At a relatively young 60 (just hiked 57 fun miles in two days last month), I have a pretty good feeling things will be different in nine years looking at 70. My buddy in his early seventies has been slowing down a bit the last few years.

And I wonder at what point I'll stop being able to get stronger at a given activity. Most older athletes echo Arnold--never stop!

There's no way to give concrete advice on the OP's question, way too many variables. There are outliers like my friend mentioned above, who hiked the AT in 106 days at age 64. He certainly was in no hurry, it was just his pace.

Yes there is a difference between 60 and 70 just as there is between 50 and 60. But a lot of those differences work differently than many assume.

The 'average' human male for instance starts to lose approximately 2% of their muscle mass each year starting at the age of 50. This means that the average man has 81.7% of his age 50 muscle mass left at 60 and 66.8% at age 70.

Now the thing to note here is that this natural biological decline is not something which can be avoided in any way by nutrition or exercise. But, and this is big, is what exercise actually means in this situation. IF you were at say 80% peak possible endurance at age 50 and then took up thru hiking and maximized your potential to the point where you were near 100% possible endurance at age 60 you would be right at 2% higher endurance than you were at age 50. Maintain that out to age 70 and you are only about 13% below where you were at age 50.

Considering that we hikers are not in the weightlifting sports where it is not possible to maintain the 100% max muscle effort results past about age 50 we are in luck.

Hiking as I have described (at say 66% max effort as someone said) you are not going to have a really deep drop off in results as you age because we are not trying to hit max effort but just put in a full day of moderate effort. So if you train towards your upper endurance limit it will be no big deal to be able to hike 8-10 hours a day even at 70 and this will result in a 20 mile day even for 70 year olds.

The biggest impact for an older person being able to do big miles over the course of a moderate effort day is base conditioning. If you are older it does take a bit more determination to get out there every day so that your base conditioning stays high. If you drift away from such conditioning and have to build it back up this is very hard to do at a more advanced age than it is when young due to the body's loss during ageing of the ability to heal and grow rapidly. The approximate figures on this aspect are that in his prime an 18 year old male can exercise very hard with little chance of injury and, with no further effort, his body will grow his muscle mass, strengthen its tendons and ligaments, and increase bone density for at least 7 days. And he will not start to lose significant strength for at least 2-3 weeks. Now a 63 year old geezer like myself goes out and works out as hard as you can on day one will only continue to gain strength for 2-3 days after putting in the effort and will start to lose strength again almost immediately. So what this means for the older person is that you can never take more than 1 day off in a row or you will have trouble holding condition and if you take a week off (as us lazy old people are want to do) then it is going to take you about 3 weeks to get back to where you were.

Additionally the gain an older person gets from working out is quite small so reaching peak condition takes much longer than it does for a young person. A minor injury,like a slightly pulled muscle, to an 18 year old is probably a 2-3 day heal time. Whereas for a 70 year old it might be 2-3 weeks.

If you are an older hopeful hiker and want to get to the point where the hiking is easy physically then you have to be able to devote a long period of time to working consistently to reach that point. But if you do it it will happen.

All the above is to argue that older folks who want to maximize their hiking ability can do it, but they need to work at it every day and in a very gradual fashion. This is what I try and do. I hike every day both with and without a pack. I start ramping up my training a LONG time before a big hike (2-3 months) and aim for the ability to do at least 20 mile days from day 1. The big reason to pursue such an ability is that it makes the hiking far more enjoyable. If the hiking is painful and you find it really exhausting it is not much fun. Get in good shape and it is easy.

[Bronk]

My first day on the AT I was hiking up a steep hill and I was passed by a 77 year old man smoking a cigarette. So it really has nothing to do with age and more to do with you. Everybody passed me. It took me 4 months to hike 850 miles. I could do 20 mile days but didn't have much fun doing it, so I would do 10 to 12 a day and also took a lot of zero days so that my average mileage ended up being about 7 miles a day.

[4eyedbuzzard]

My first day on the AT I was hiking up a steep hill and I was passed by a 77 year old man smoking a cigarette. So it really has nothing to do with age and more to do with you. Everybody passed me. It took me 4 months to hike 850 miles. I could do 20 mile days but didn't have much fun doing it, so I would do 10 to 12 a day and also took a lot of zero days so that my average mileage ended up being about 7 miles a day.

The only real measure of hiking IMO is whether or not you enjoyed your hike and the time outdoors. Whether you hike 7 or 17 or 27 or 37 mpd, it's still the slowest way possible of actually getting anywhere, and done for no reason other than the enjoyment of the journey itself. Why hurry?

[MuddyWaters]

The only real measure of hiking IMO is whether or not you enjoyed your hike and the time outdoors. Whether you hike 7 or 17 or 27 or 37 mpd, it's still the slowest way possible of actually getting anywhere, and done for no reason other than the enjoyment of the journey itself. Why hurry?

Well if you go too slow you have to carry too much food and your load is too heavy and you won't enjoy yourself as much. Unless your initials are TW.

The same can be said for going too fast.

There is an Optimum for everybody, a range can which they can enjoy themselves the most.

This is probably in the 10 to 15 mile range based on average people's experiences.
More for some less for others .

I met a 73 year old woman a couple of years ago section hiking the trail over two or three years. Her first year she hiked about 700 miles. She averaged about 5 miles a day. Worked for her. I'd be like, what you do with the other 10 hours of daylight?

It's not really a question of enjoying yourself it's a question of being able to plan how much time is going to take you to do something. And there's no way for an individual to know what to expect if they have no experience. The real answer is get out there and get some experience and then you'll know how many miles per day you can hike and you'll know how many miles per day you want to hike.

I honestly can't imagine someone setting out to long-distance hike without ever having hiked at least a couple of over niters before but lotsa people seem to want to do that.

[gwschenk]

I've been hiking long enough to know it doesn't matter. Just go out and hike. What happens happens. Life's too short to worry about matters of no consequence.

[rocketsocks]

I've been hiking long enough to know it doesn't matter. Just go out and hike. What happens happens. Life's too short to worry about matters of no consequence.

this^^^^^^^^^^

[TexasBob]

I've been hiking long enough to know it doesn't matter. Just go out and hike. What happens happens. Life's too short to worry about matters of no consequence.

So true. If you are not enjoying yourself then you are wasting time that could be spent doing something that makes you happy. Hiking is not a competitive sport.

[QiWiz]

You really won't know till you see how it goes for you. Listen to your body and don't force it. A lighter pack will help with more comfortable miles. Starting early each day and ending later also make for more miles. I have not done a thru, but from Springer approach through to Hot Springs in three weeks at age 57 and overweight by 50 pounds, I was able to do 13 miles/day on average in the first half, gradually increasing to 16 miles per day in the second half. I'm sure that if I had been able to continue hiking, my daily mileage would have gone up a bit more still. FWIW, I did 20 miles on my last day into Hot Springs from the top of Max Patch.

[Elaikases]

It's not really a question of enjoying yourself it's a question of being able to plan how much time is going to take you to do something. And there's no way for an individual to know what to expect if they have no experience. The real answer is get out there and get some experience and then you'll know how many miles per day you can hike and you'll know how many miles per day you want to hike.

I honestly can't imagine someone setting out to long-distance hike without ever having hiked at least a couple of over niters before but lotsa people seem to want to do that.

It seems that over half the books are by people who just hit the trail and learn as they go until they finish. It amazes me. It also tells me just how flexible the trail is.

[Lynnette]

Well - I am 64.5. Been hiking since I was 17. When I plan my hikes I shoot for single digit days. I will hike longer and further occasionally as the trails dictate. I hike for 13.5 days where upon my body says it has shaken parts loose that normally belong together and SIT. I seems that on day 14 my body wants to subject itself to fractures WO any impact. O I take my supplements year round but have learned stop at day 14. The longest day in 2017 was 25 trail miles followed by 2 miles of asphalt. Tahoe Rim. Water was the driving factor. But the Sierra is so beautiful you dont even realize you are covering miles.

[colorado_rob]

Just another data point.... I'm 62 (almost), and I did start noticing my average backpacking MPH pace at the same effort was slowing over the last few years. But my MPD pace has not slacked as much, meaning I just hike longer hours on a given day than I used to. Basically, one very small "benefit" of getting older is that our long-term endurance stays with us longer than our strength and speed.

I do notice one thing more now though: Say we're (my wife and I, she is 60) hiking 15-16 mile days on a trail such as the AT. If we push a 19-20 mile day, no matter that we're in excellent hiking shape, the "pain" level in those last few miles goes up significantly. In other words, we can do 15-16 without a thought, but 19-20 starts hurting, plus we feel it the next day.

Keep hiking!

[Sailor (The other one)]

This is a longish post. I'm using writing it to dial in our plan.
Thank you all for the very helpful information. Reading through it and constructing this post have helped a great deal.
The only serious factor affecting our mileage is resupply. We have certain nutrition and medicine needs to plan for. But realistically we need our plan – and our attitude - to be flexible.
We have done four section hikes on the AT in Georgia and lots of 1-3 night trips in Florida before we moved to North Carolina. While obviously we found important differences in terrain between Florida and Georgia, we found the Florida sand and brutal heat as much as an endurance challenge as the Georgia mountains.
On our section hikes – with no or little pre-hike getting-in-shape - we averaged 2.5 miles a day the first week and five the second each time. We had feared that such low mileage might make a long-hike-maybe-a-thru-hike impractical, but your feedback has eliminated that fear.
We learned to schedule our major meal and a longish rest at lunch, which helped increase our average mileage with no pain. On each trip we had mail drops but learned not to let them dictate our schedule. We learned that to supply our food/med needs was important but also that no plan survives the first day. So we are flexible and have learned to trust that God, the trail and trail angels will provide. It took me a while to get that. They always have for us in the past, like when our mail drop didn't make it to Neel's Gap and a trail angel drove us to Blairsville and back so we could resupply at a grocery store. He and the rest of the staff said it was too expensive to resupply in their store and volunteered to drive us. Nice people.
We also expect we will supplement our resupply boxes with town food, especially if we are lucky enough to start burning serious calories and start dropping a lot of weight. I hope.
We love both hiking and camping. Very happy doing either. If we need to rest an extra day, we enjoy it. If we need to hike a little further, we can enjoy that too. It is encouraging that several of you note that while you average X number of miles you can go X+ when necessary.
We're a husband/wife/dog family. Our pace is also set by our slowest member that day, the dog stays leashed, we stop to smell every other flower, pee on almost every bush and explore some side trails. We carry a tent and camp near but not in shelters when possible because they often have privies that my wife Mudpie considers a luxury.
We plan to start out very, very slowly, averaging 2.5 miles daily even if we have gotten to 5 miles a day average in our training. Our experience has been that we tend to lose our appetites during the first week. This gives us the possibility of averaging even less than 2.5 miles a day until our first mail drop if we need to.
Our experience, and your input, have underscored the need to get into the best shape we can before we start. We have started with a diet and each have lost several pounds so far, including the over-weight dog.
We live in the North Carolina mountains and have a cabin on 2.5 acres of wooded hills bordering on national forest. I made a hiking trail duplicating some of the AT trail we've experienced like straight up/straight down, switchbacks, rocks, roots, fallen trees, cut-in dirt/log/rock steps, etc. This we hike several times a week and plan to get to doing daily We are just south of the Chunky Gal trail and the 25-mile loop Fires Creek Rim Trail. Our goal is to be able to average at least five miles a day. We plan to do the 25-mile loop over 5 days in April a couple weeks before our May start at Springer.
We are far from doing all our planned exercise and hiking perfectly due to other responsibilities, illness and laziness However, even if our pre-hike get-in-shape plans do not get as done as we'd like, we're going anyway, building into our plan time to get our trail legs.
We also plan for an average week to be something like 2 hike days, 1 camp zero day, three hike days, one town zero day, depending on what the trail/resupply points/our energy levels dictate. When I was a personal trainer I learned well that adequate rest is a least as important as exercise to increase both strength and endurance. We also plan to try to get to mail drops right around when food we're carrying is gone but resupply from stores if we're too slow. We won't suffer if we don't have our preferred food every day and we plan carrying a couple days extra meds just in case.
We have also adjusted our pack weight as we've learned. We've gotten the lightest versions of what we can both afford and not destroy. Silnylon but no Cuben. Mudpie can be brutal on gear and destroyed our first and only cuben dry sack the first time she touched it. We have one titanium cook pot between us, but we also have two big double wall titanium cups that keep our necessary-for-survival morning coffee hot even when it was 23 degrees out. We've gotten lighter packs, but ones that can handle more than our usual weight if they need to. The Granite Gear packs that replaced our first ones were light but very uncomfortable when carrying their maximum weights. We also hated that packing them was like stuffing sausage while wearing gloves. Our gear was partly chosen to avoid daily frustration rituals like that. We have a pump for our 3-inch thick 24-in wide sleep pads which eliminated our old folks hip and shoulder pain. Our tent is huge but light for its hugeness – a 5-pound Shangri-La 5 that eliminated Mudpie's claustrophobia-induced anxiety she suffered in our Double Rainbow. It also holds the dog and all our gear, which we like. We've learned that anything that causes frustration isn't worth it.
We really appreciate those who HYOH and are not bound by others styles or values, from the lightest who don't even (horrors to this ex-chef) cook their food, to TipiWalter, my I've-done-it-my-way-for-over-100-trips hero. I have had a bad habit of thinking I know all I need and that I can determine on my own how things will be without considering others' experience or getting some experience first. I'm slowly getting rid of that and learning to learn. When Mudpie asked me what besides a health problem would make us get off the trail I said “When it stops being fun. But we can't make that decision on a bad day.”
Thanks for your help.

[TexasBob]

In 2008 we met an older couple in the Smokies who started at Springer two months earlier in February. They were averaging around 5 miles a day just taking their time and enjoying the trip. I know they made it as far as Harper's Ferry by August. A good example of hike your own hike.

[Tipi Walter]

In 2008 we met an older couple in the Smokies who started at Springer two months earlier in February. They were averaging around 5 miles a day just taking their time and enjoying the trip. I know they made it as far as Harper's Ferry by August. A good example of hike your own hike.

Excellent and mirrors my desires. I figure I could do 7 miles a day with one zero day a week and finish the trail in about 352 days. Perfect.

Or do 2 miles a day with a 30 day food load and finish the trail in 4 years and several months. What a great trip that would be. And only resupply once a month.

[George]

shelters ( and associated facilities) average 7-8 mi apart, if you lunch at one and stay near the next, it usually sets a comfortable pace

[Plain Pete]

My buddy and I will be hiking the sections north of Pearisburg this May less than a month before our 77th birthday(we are 3 days apart). We hike because we love it and the only mileage we may worry about is the next spring. We usually shoot for 10 miles a day and often do more. We enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee in the morning, talk almost constantly and often take a nap at lunch. Will I complete my AT section hike? Probably not, but I will have had had a great time.

[RangerZ]

We need to know about comfortable average daily mileage for old folks like us - 60 years old + - for long distance hikes on the AT, from long section hikes to thru hikes. We are not interested in hiking big miles for big miles sake or to make a deadline. We're more like easy does it folks and if we don't complete a thru in a year, we don't care.
Thanks.

Wait a minute, 60 is old, folks?

[MuddyWaters]

Wait a minute, 60 is old, folks?

40 is old for some. By that age some look like 10 miles of bad road.

[Shutterbug]

We need to know about comfortable average daily mileage for old folks like us - 60 years old + - for long distance hikes on the AT, from long section hikes to thru hikes. We are not interested in hiking big miles for big miles sake or to make a deadline. We're more like easy does it folks and if we don't complete a thru in a year, we don't care.
Thanks.

My wife and I, both 74, often hike with younger family members. We have observed that age doesn't have much to do how many miles one can comfortably hike. It is often the younger ones who are unable to do the long hikes. We do 14 mile hikes without difficulty. Three things make a big difference in the number of miles, elevation change, weather and trail condition. In the Grand Canyon where there are big changes in elevation, we don't make 2 miles an hour, but on flat trails, we can cover 3 miles per hour.