The Premeditation of Evils

As training is under way for the first hiking challenge event of the year, the Maamturks Challenge, it has got me thinking about the pain of training and it’s benefit.

When training for any big event, we often put ourselves through many months of pain for an event that will only last several hours. Is the pain and hardship really worth it for just one event?

I think so, but the real value of the effort is not for the event itself, rather the value is in the pain and suffering itself.

The endurance sports writer, Matt Fitzgerald, writes about pushing through psychological boundaries to achieve higher athletic performance.

Fitzgerald maintains that the perception of effort is the true barrier to elevated performance, not the body.

According to Fitzgerald, if you feel worse than you expected to feel in the event, then your perception of effort will increase and your performance will suffer. On the contrary if you brace yourself for a hard time, then how you feel during the event will be no worse than you expected and you will be setting yourself up to get the most out of your body.

This runs against the grain of the current trend of positive thinking. A positive mental attitude of always expecting the best will eventually leave you feeling worse when your lofty expectations are not met.

I’ve noticed this with myself where preparation for competitions that haven’t gone to plan, such as concern about not getting enough sleep or being in a bad frame of mind and then as a result going into that event expecting very little. I have noticed that I have often outperform more on those occasions when things don’t go to plan than when I have had high expectations from things being perfect.

This is not a new idea, nor is it solely related to sporting performance. It’s an idea that dates back over two thousand years to Stoic philosophy.

Rather than practicing positive visualization, the Stoics practiced the opposite, negative visualization, or what they called the premeditation of evils.

A stoic would spend a few minutes every morning visualising everything that could go wrong that day. When that bad event didn’t happen they would take joy and appreciation that it didn’t occur. If the bad event did happen, then they would be prepared for it and it wouldn’t disrupt their tranquility.

The Stoics, like the Buddhists, understood the folly of attachment and realised that one will eventually lose all one’s possessions, if only by one’s own eventual death, and so cautioned about becoming overly attached to anything external. A stoic would advise to value what is innately one’s own, such as one’s attitudes, beliefs and choices. Anything external is outside one’s own control. Being dependent on any external entity or condition surrenders one’s freedom to it and turns one into a slave. One of the most famous proponents of stoicism, Epictetus, was actually a slave, so he knew what he was talking about.

In a sporting event, stoics would advise to do all the necessary training and preparation to perform at one’s best, but then not become overly attached to the outcome. Like an archer taking the perfect shot but missing the target due to a sudden gust of wind. The archer would praise himself for taking the perfect shot and would be completely unmoved about missing the target.

A premeditation of the evils that can befall one either in a competition or in life, sets you up to appreciate the simpler things in life that, as a human, you naturally take for granted.

What does Hypothermia feel like

It’s a warm day, not a cloud in the sky. It’s the month of March on a isolated mountain in Ireland and the weather has been uncharacteristically warm for this time of the year. There is so much heat from the sun that you leave you warm clothes behind and don’t bring any food with you. It’s a warm day you’ll be up and down in no time.
After a four hour trek up to one of the summits, you spot a rocky outcrop that you decide will be a fun scramble. The is a beautiful scramble, just one little crux that you need to get across. A quick jump on to protruding foothold and you extend your hand to grab a very obvious handhold. As you switch balance and reach, the foothold snaps. The next thing you realise is that you are falling. You manage to land on your feet when you hear a snap. You try to stand up but pain shoots through your right ankle.
You are now immobilised alone on the top of a mountain. You sit on a rock berating yourself for being so stupid.
Sitting there you notice that it’s actually quite cold when you’re not moving. Searching through your small backpack for anything, you find nothing but your phone and a small bottle of Rum.
Hypothermia occurs when the body is unable to maintain normal temperatures because of exposure to cold. The body’s normal core temperature is between 36.5°C and 37.5°C.
Hyperthermia affects Hikers and armies alike.
The classical piece by Tchaikovsky, the 1812 Overture, commemorates the successful Russian defence against Napoleon’s invading army.



Hypothermia aided the destruction of the invading army by causing confusion, lost of consciousness and death. Others just fell to their knees and eventually died where they knelt.
As hikers, we may not be braving the severe Russian winters, but we are equally at risk of hypothermia. We are particularly at risk when temperatures are around freezing. Even in warmer temperature we can still be at risk. Simply being immobile on a mountain ridge at 10 °C in a storm can kill you. Windchill makes it worse by moving the warm air next to your skin away. Wet makes it worse. Water evaporates and cools. It also reduces the effectiveness of insulation. The combination is deadly. Skinny people are more susceptible than overweight people.
Not sure what to do, feeling the pain of the broken ankle, hoping someone will pass by, you decide to warm up by taking a couple swigs of rum. You now feel much warmer and more relaxed.
However, alcohol consumption increases the risk of hypothermia by increasing blood flow to the skin, resulting in heat being lost to the environment. This produces the effect of you feeling warm, when you are actually losing heat. Alcohol can also decrease the body’s ability to shiver and use energy that would normally aid the body in generating heat. The overall effects of alcohol leads to a decrease in body temperature and a decreased ability to generate body heat in response to cold environments.
The earliest stages, called mild hypothermia, are characterized by such things as a loss of coordination and changes in personality.
As the sun drops behind a far away peak, the temperatures plummets to around 7°C. You are feeling very cold and you’re core body temperature now drops below 34 °C, you now start to shiver. At this point, you still have the presence of mind to do things like make a phone call. You can temporarily stop the shivering to retrieve the phone and dial a number. But there is no reception, there are no network antennas in close proximity to even allow an emergency call.
As your temperature continues to fall below 34 °C, the shivering becomes uncontrollable.
The evening progress and you feel the cold. As you core body temperature falls to 32 °C, you are now having irrational thoughts, sluggish thinking, amnesia, and difficulty speaking. You know you are in a perilous situation, but you are feeling surprisingly calm. You have no real dread or any real pain or distress. Without that fear of death, the drive to take care of oneself is lost. At this point you know you should be doing something to save yourself but you can’t really be bothered.
As your body temperature drops below 32 °C,  you stop shivering. Now you feel really confused and start behaving more irrationally.
Once  shivering ceases you are in a life threatening situation and will very likely die if you do not get help.
Parts of your body will start to shut down, sending messages to the brain telling it that these areas are fine. Your brain doesn’t care anymore or simply doesn’t know that it’s cold.
You start to experience a behaviour called paradoxical undressing. You become disoriented, confused, and combative. You feel like your skin is too hot and burning and so start discarding your clothing, which, in turn, increases your rate of heat loss.
In severe hypothermia you can be quite serene, not frightened, or not even really alarmed. You know you are in trouble, but you have resigned yourself to it and are pretty calm.
You have been sitting here immobilised for several hours now while staring at a clear dark sky and the ambient temperature has now fallen to freezing.
Suddenly you hear a voice. Yes, it’s your friend, he’s calling. At last, and unbelievably, his hut is just 50 metres away hidden behind a boulder. Your friend helps you up and you now see his house, which is fully lit up. Opening the door, you are welcomed by a blazing open fire, your friend lays you down on a thick soft rug in front of the open fire. You begin to warm up and feel a great sense of relief and gratitude that the ordeal is over. The hut is beautifully decorated inside. Your friend is preparing a pasta dish and there is an opened bottle of red wine on the table. This was some ordeal but you sure will have some story to tell tomorrow. In the meantime you will need to get your ankle seen to and will have to make you way from your friends hut to your home. But those things can be taken care of tomorrow. Tonight, you are getting heat back into your body and are about to feast on a meal with wine.
The flames from the fire dance around the wood and then start changing form, the flames darken and get smaller, the interior of the hut starts to vanish. You call to your friend to ask what’s happening, suddenly you are alone staring at an empty sky.
With restricted blood flow to the brain, you have started to hallucinate. Your friend, the hut, the meal, the wine were only a illusions. You now become consumed with a sense of despondency of dying alone on the side of a mountain. Tears roll down your cheeks.
The despondency lasts for a while and then is replaced with a calm acceptance of your fate.
With your core body temperature below 29 °C,  you become unconscious. As the brain cools down, you experience a gradual decrease in your level of consciousness until you slip into a coma. After that, all of your metabolic processes start to slow down. As your body temperature drops below 26 °C, your heartbeat will become irregular and eventually stop. The moment of death will likely be silent and relatively painless.
A person dying from hypothermia will get into sort of a dreamlike state, drifting in and out of consciousness, and they may have visions of random things, possibly in a state of bliss. Dying from hypothermia is often perceived as a slow and painful death. It may be slow but by all accounts it’s not as painful as people believe.
The next day a walker finds your dead body and your death becomes another lesson and another statistic on how to dress for the outdoors.

This hypothetical account of hypothermia is based on my own experiences of mild hypothermia together with the research that I have done into the matter.

Maamturks Challenge

Leenane Hill

The Maamturks Challenge is an annual linear hiking event organised by NUI Galway Mountaineering Club. The route is a tough 25 km hike with 2300 metres of ascent that traverses the Maamturks Mountain range in Connemara.

The official event is held in the Spring of every year, with those participants who successfully complete the course, by reaching specified control points within the given cut-off times, receiving a certificate of completion. It should be noted that not everyone who attempts the challenge will actually complete it. The traverse is also attempted outside the official event by groups organising their own logistics, but still attempting to hit the same control points.

The distance and ascent may seem less daunting until you consider the terrain and elevation. It’s not a gradual climb on a waymarked trail, but rather it’s a very hard slog over rough open mountain. It consists of a series of steep energy-sapping climbs followed by steep descents. Then there is the difficulty of the navigation in very unpredictable weather.

According to Mountain Views, a respected Irish mountaineering website, it is the second toughest challenge in the country1. An article in the Irish Times newspaper reported it was harder than climbing Kilimanjaro2. In hillwalking circles it is spoken about with great respect.

The unrelenting steep climbs and descents are what characterises this hike and garners so much respect for it. Even the names of the locations can conjure up ominous visions of what awaits. One such name is “the col of despondency” which might have been taken out of some puritanical book such as “Pilgrim’s Progress” as a gauge of how you feel at this point. At this point the fatigue from the day’s unending ups and downs and the rather uninviting view to the next seemingly insurmountable climb towards Leenane Hill will lead a strong feeling of despondency. Here you will see people panting, falling, and crawling – in fact anything to get themselves up that last pull. Should you consider quitting at this point, well the available options are pretty unattractive also. 

The following points (with Irish Grid Coordinates) must be hit in the following order.to complete the challenge:

OrderNameIrish Grid Ref
1Start L 964 497 (GPS N53.489,W9.560
2Corcog summit L 953 492
3Mam EanL 904 504
4Binn Idir an Da logL 888 528
5Loch Mham OchoigeL 879 536
7Binn BhriocainL 855 551
8Binn BhanL 856 568
9Leenane hillL 861 598
10Finish L 909 554

Eventually, having made it to the finish, you will cast your weary eyes on the quaint village of Leenane, where you can relax in the satisfaction of having completed the second toughest hiking event in the country.

Experienced hikers tend to take between ten and twelve hours to complete the traverse. The walk is already challenging enough in itself, but when you add speed to the equation you bring a new dimension of suffering. Most participants are happy to complete the challenge within the standard cut-off time, but there is a small cohort not content on just finishing, but want to push the limits of human endurance and stamina by adding the extra burden of a time constraint.

The challenge starts at a non-descript pull-in on the side of the R336 road about four kilometres from Maam Cross, at the Irish Grid Reference: L 964 497 or GPS coordinates N53.488 W9.559.

A route of the challenge can be viewed from the following View Ranger site. A GPX of the route can also be exported and imported into the GPS device of your choice.

A GPX of the route can be viewed and download from View Ranger.

References

1 The Toughest. (2020, Quarterly May). The Summit. Retrieved from https://mountainviews.ie/newsletters/month/2020-05/

2 According to this trip report, https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/travel/walks/walk-for-the-weekend-the-irish-kilimanjaro-1.2933178?mode=amp

How Many Calories Does Hiking Burn?

Hiking is a great way to lose weight and keep that weight off. It’s great fun, has a lower impact than running and can burn just as many calories under the right conditions. How many calories you burn depends on a number of factors.

The factors include: 

  • your weight; 
  • the weight of your backpack;
  • amount of climbing;
  • the type of terrain; 
  • the distance walked; and
  • the time taken to walk that distance. 

These are lot of factors to consider, so I’ve created the following fun calculator to give a general estimate of the amount of calories burnt while indulging in your favorite pursuit. 

The calculator gives the amount of net calories burnt.

Click here for the hiking calorie calculator.


I also use this calculator to plan the amount of food that I will need to carry for a multi-day hike. 

In a future article I will discuss my food choices for a multi-day hike to optimize the most amount of calories for the least amount of weight. 

Welcome to my new blog

Over the last few years, people have suggested that I should start some kind of a blog to document my travels and life musings. I have never thought that my life was in any way extraordinary or that anyone would be in the least bit interested in what I have to say. After some reflection, I guess I have had a few adventures and for some reason people find my musings on life, the universe and everything, slightly interesting or at least entertaining. Setting up this blog may be an indulgence in allowing me to talk about what I’m passionate about. It is certainly are welcomed outlet for talking about hiking when I’m away from the trail. For me, hiking, walking, sauntering, rambling or whatever you want to call it, is not just some recreational activity, it has much greater significance. It is a metaphor for life itself.

If what I have to say is of any interest, I credited that to my fellow hikers and non-hikers alike with perhaps a little blending of my own mix of philosophical thought.

The Name of The Blog

With all the best and most memorable domains name already taken, especially under the “.com” top-level domain name, trying to find a catchy name is no easy task.

Eventually, after hearing the Chuck Berry oldie, “Go Johnny Go”, I opted for the name “Walk Johnny Walk”, as it seemed to fit my passion.