Hobbes
Level 6 Valued Member
Why not find some hills near home and ruck? The problem with stepups for serious hikes is no eccentric portion. Hiking a mountain - you go up and then down.
I used to run in the Jasper to Banff relay race in Canada. (The first generation course going from Jasper to Banff in 17 legs). There were two really tough uphill legs - which I never ran, but could have. One was up to the Columbia ice fields. The flip side of that was running down from the ice fields to the Saskatchewan landing area. Something like a drop of 1,000 or 1500 metres over a 15 km course. As a 200 lb runner there was no way I could have done the downhill. In Jasper the day after the race if you saw a runner taking the wheelchair entrance instead of steps you knew they had run down from the ice fields.
For a serious mountain I’d ruck long for conditioning and do the stepups as strength training.
I used to run in the Jasper to Banff relay race in Canada. (The first generation course going from Jasper to Banff in 17 legs). There were two really tough uphill legs - which I never ran, but could have. One was up to the Columbia ice fields. The flip side of that was running down from the ice fields to the Saskatchewan landing area. Something like a drop of 1,000 or 1500 metres over a 15 km course. As a 200 lb runner there was no way I could have done the downhill. In Jasper the day after the race if you saw a runner taking the wheelchair entrance instead of steps you knew they had run down from the ice fields.
For a serious mountain I’d ruck long for conditioning and do the stepups as strength training.