Before I purchased a UA plan I used the Training for the Uphill Athlete book to build my own “back to running” plan. (I suffered a bad injury that left me inactive for a significant period of time).

I found the book contained everything I needed for transition and early base phases.

Almost a year later, when I got to the stage I was ready to add in intensity, ME, specific strength, and so on, I ran out of road with the book.

I simply didn’t have the background or experience with higher intensity structured training to layer those into a plan. At that stage I purchased one of the UA plans and I’m getting great value from it.

@juskojj;

While you can train the aerobic system “by feel” (ie. no HR monitor), most people need the monitor for a feedback mechanism. If you read and understand the theoretical aspects of aerobic development on the site and in our books you will see why we push this. Most people just push as hard as they can for as long as they’ve got time allotted. This is a surefire way to not improve.

The single biggest thing you will need for such a trip is a big aerobic base. To develop that (and maybe you are already aerobically very fit) will take months of high volumes of aerobic base training. To best control this you should use some sort of HR monitor. Cheap/simple ones with no GPS are under $50. You can buy a Wahoo chest strap and monitor and download the Wahoo app to your phone.

I’m not sure what you mean when you say you have more than enough time to train but can only get out for 30min. With the goal you have set; 3-4 days and 25-30miles with lots of elevation gain and loss carrying a 30-40lb pack you will need to have a much more substantial time allotment to training if you hope for this to be anything other than a brutal death march.

25miles of hiking is going to take probably 8-10 hours. You’re going to be doing this 4 days in a row. That’s possibly about 40 hours of work. That’ll be more work packed into 4 days than you will have done spread out over a month if you can only do 30min/day = 15hours/month. That is not a recipe for success. There needs to be some training that begins to simulate some of the demands that your hike will entail.

You may indeed be able to do such a hike on will power and I am not saying you can’t or shouldn’t. I just want to be honest in saying that your goal is not inline with your ability to make the time commitment needed for training.

I don’t think you need any of our plans. They will not work for you if you have 30minutes to train. They all require significantly more volume than that. Best/cheapest thing would be to get a copy of either one of our books, read and absorb the principles and build your own plan around your time constraints.

Scott