Schooled on speed hiking via Millet France's experience

Before tonight, I'd never heard of the French outdoor outfitter Millet. With the tagline, Mountain by Experience, this company is no joke. I wouldn't even have heard of it if I weren't searching for information on "speed hiking" (which I wasn't even sure was a thing before Googling it). I'm glad that I did.

So, in fact speed hiking is a thing, and it's demonstrated beautifully in this video produced as a marketing piece for @Millet_France:



You may have figured from the trail descriptions and pictures I post on HikeyHikey - or through my tweets @MyFitLife2Day - that I'm very into hiking. But only recently did I consider trying to hike to reach the summit with the kind of speed demonstrated in the Millet France video.

So far I've hiked several times to elevations above 10,000 ft (once to above 11,000 ft), with hikes ranging from the Albuquerque's La Luz Trail  - 10 miles and 3,775 ft (1,151 m) elevation gain from the lower to upper tram terminals - to the Sandia's South Summit - 12 miles out-and-back with a near 10,000 ft foot summit and 3,400 ft (1,036 m) of elevation gain. There is only so much time in the day, and if I want to be able to do a 15 mile day hike to an amazing peak, speed hiking just may be the ticket!

It's funny how the universe works. I only researched speed hiking because I was recently called "speedy" by some guys I went hiking with here in Palm Springs. We took the South Lykken Trail from Ramon to the Skyline Trail (a.k.a. Cactus-to- Clouds) junction. I did book it, I suppose, but I took frequent breaks. My plan now is to do some further research on conditioning for speed hiking and begin practicing.

Perhaps Millet France can help outfit me - sponsor my blogs. I'm taking MyFitLife2Day, Man of Merit, HikeyHikey, my YouTube channel and my HubPages on the road next year, and one of my spots will be Chamonix and the Mont Blanc trek. Conditioning for the trip would be a perfect tie-in for their brand and my blogs.

In any case, I'm going to begin training soon. There's a great trail near my house where I'm going to time myself and begin setting goals to increase my speed. I will definitely learn to fuel myself differently, but hydration will probably remain about the same. We'll see, and I'll be sure to report back!