Out in the hills

Thanks for all the comments on the last post.  It is nice to have such supportive readers.

I took the advice of some of you yesterday and just did something that made me happy - a 10 mile walk in the Scottish mountains.  The weather was perfect and the day left me feeling tired but energised.

(There are more photos here)

I took a video on the top because I was blown away by the views:



This morning I was up early and into my local hills where I was lucky enough to experience a cloud inversion.  The cloud and mist hung low across the city but I soon climbed above it into blue skies.  It is stunning to look down on this carpet of white cloud with the blue skies above.

Certainly a weekend that has been proper re-creation.  Tiring but worth it for what I saw and did.

Mountain Trail Walking Study

I suppose this one is for Hillfit?  Nothing very exciting - walking in the mountains is hard work and neither BCAA nor arginine supplementation have much impact.

Energy expenditure during 2-day trail walking in the mountains (2,857 m) and the effects of amino acid supplementation in older men and women

We compared relative exercise intensity and active energy expenditure (AEE) on trail walking in the mountains, with those of daily exercise training, and whether branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) and arginine supplementation attenuated the release of markers indicating muscle damage and declines in physical performance. Twenty-one subjects (~63 years) were divided into two groups: amino acid (AA, 51 g of amino acids and 40 g of carbohydrate, male/female = 6/4) or placebo (PL, 91 g of carbohydrate, male/female = 6/5) supplementation during 2 days of trail walking in the mountains. We measured heart rate (HR), AEE, fatigue sensation, water and food intake, and sweat loss during walking. In addition, we measured peak aerobic capacity (VO2peak) and heart rate (HRpeak) with graded-intensity walking, vertical jumping height (VJ) before and after walking. We found that average HR and AEE during uphill walking were ~100% HRpeak and ~60% VO2peak, while they were ~80 and ~20% during downhill walking, respectively. Moreover, average total AEE per day was sevenfold that of their daily walking training. VJ after walking remained unchanged compared with the baseline in AA (P > 0.2), while it was reduced by ~10% in PL (P < 0.01), although with no significant difference in the reduction between the groups (P > 0.4). The responses of other variables were not significantly different between groups (all, P > 0.2). Thus, trail walking in the mountains required a high-intensity effort for older people, while the effects of BCAA and arginine supplementation were modest in this condition.

Hillfit to go places like this

What a morning.  As I tried to explain in Hillfit:Strength all this training is about facilitating other things, recreation and even every day life.  This morning that meant going up my local mountains and sharing the sunrise with the sheep.

It was amazing.

It is all really about this....

I was up in the hills this morning to watch the sunrise over the snow.  It was glorious.  Full story here.

As I've said before, this is what it is all about really, getting and staying fit enough so I can get to places like this whenever I want.