The Wrinkled Runner
The Wrinkled Runner
Mammoth March, Marathon Mind
Hey Running Friends!
I recap a very rocky 20-mile Mammoth March in Hudson Valley and address how it affected marathon training.
Mammoth March: Check out all the places this hike takes place
All Trails: If you do a lot of hiking, this is a great resource for different hikes you can do near you, and the paid version will let you download a hike and be able to find your way even if there is no cell service
Things I used on the Hike (I earn from qualifying purchases)
Saloman Speedcross 6 GTX: These are the shoes I used, they are a trail running shoe, but they were EXCELLENT for the hike.
Day Pack: Make sure your pack has adjustable waist and chest straps
Wool Hiking Socks: No cotton! These Smartwool socks feel great, no itching!
Tick Prevention Spray: We sprayed this on gear and clothing before the hike
Tick Remover "Key": We did not need to use this, but we carried these lightweight tick remover tools just in case!
If you are looking for a coach to help you reach your running goals, even if it's just to start to run, take a look at my Coaching Services page on the website. I do virtual, in-person (Buffalo, NY area) and also offer single zoom sessions for those would just like to chat with a coach one time.
I am also a Personal Trainer, and offer virtual training as well, in addition to Nutrition Coaching.
Find my additional outlets over at the YouTube channel and at wrinkledrunner.com. Sign up over on the blog for the once-a-month newsletter! If you would like information on utilizing a running coach, check out what I can do for you here.
If you have any running-related questions, please send an email to sherry@wrinkledrunner.com…I answer every one.
Hello and welcome back to the Wrinkled Runner podcast. Um, it's been a while. It's just been life's been just all over the place. But uh I wanted to recap for you not a run actually or a race, but a mammoth march. And for those of you who don't know, a mammoth march is a 20 mile hike, and some of the events actually also have a 30-mile hike. And I signed up for this, and I'm just gonna do a recap of it in case it is something that you may want to do. And it is a challenge, even if you are a runner and you are a runner of marathons, hiking uses some different muscles, and uh yeah, so I'm gonna just recap what I did, and this was a few weeks ago. Now we're in mid-October 2025 25, and I did this on October 5th of 25. So I'm also in mid-marathon build, actually coming to the end. My marathon is in 28 days, but at the time when I signed up for this marathon march, I did not know I was going to be running this the Richmond Marathon. So my fitness business is mostly run coaching, and uh I do strength training for my runners through that. But I do take on a few, very few, personal training clients on the side, and that are they're not runners, they're just interested in personal training, and I go to their homes and work out with them and build their programs and things like that. So, one of my clients I like to give challenges to because uh she is someone who can handle a lot of challenge, and it's just something that I like to throw at her, she's always up for it, and I found this Mammoth March thing going through my uh Facebook feed and thought this would be an excellent challenge for this client, and I wanted to do it too, so I thought we could do this together. We talked about it back in February, I think that's when we signed up for it, and at the time I was training for the Buffalo Marathon, which I thought would be over with at the end of May, it because it's in the end of May, but because of our winter, which I think I've talked about before, it was just ice, just ice all the time. It was not safe to be outside training. I don't have a treadmill, I do not like treadmills, but I'm actually thinking of breaking down and getting one just in case this winter ends up being the same as last winter because I deferred my Buffalo marathon to next May. And so I'm going to have to go through another winter of running outside. Hopefully, I can, but if I can't, I really need an alternative way to get that mileage in. So, anyway, I signed up for this mammoth march and decided to put together some training for it. Now, hiking is not my specialty, so I had to do a little bit of research, a lot of research, on training for hikes and you know what you need to do, what what strength should be done, ways that it's different from running and from marathon training, and kind of put together a training program for myself and my client. Now, we did not hit all of the things that I had wanted to do in this training, just a lot was going on in both of our lives for the summer. But we were able to get some training in, and I think that did go a long way for the mammoth march. Now, if you are interested, I will absolutely put a link in the show notes for you to go to their website. They have them all over the country throughout the whole year. It just depends on like where you live. They try to keep it so it's kind of cool on the cool side wherever, wherever you are. Uh, so this was in Hudson Valley, which is near New York City. In October, early October, it should be like an ideal hiking kind of climate. Well, because of our summer and our fall here in the northeast, we actually reached a high of 85 degrees that day. So uh I kept watching the weather and and it was, I was like, oh my gosh, I hope this is not out in the open and that we are shaded for most of this hike. So uh we signed up, we decided to do a few hikes during the summer, and after I deferred my marathon in Buffalo, I really, really wanted to do a marathon this year. I I've had to defer for one reason or another my past few marathons. And so I really wanted to get something on the books for this year. And I signed up for the Richmond Marathon because my son lives there, and that is on November 15th of 2025. So I knew I was signing up for a marathon while I was going to be doing this 20-mile hike. Kind of thought maybe the 20-mile hike would be like one of the weekends that I do a 20-mile run, even though it is different. So I'll talk later when I get to that point about what how I handled that issue. But anyway, so throughout the summer, I was combining marathon training with also trying to hit the trails a few times. We did a five-mile hike and we did a 10-mile hike, mostly to make sure that the shoes that we bought were something that we were going to want to hike 20 miles in and also use a day pack. So, kind of like a practice run, like we do in running a half or a marathon, where we practice everything we're gonna wear and our fueling and all that good stuff. So we bought the Solomon Six shoe. It's a it's actually a running trail shoe. We didn't want something heavy and boot-like uh on our feet for the 20 miles. I wore hiking boots once that had like steel-toed shoes, and it was not a 20-mile hike by any stretch, and my toenails were black, they fell off, they hurt like hack. I mean, I kept thinking I was going to take these boots off and just hike barefoot when I had to do this, and this was like probably 10 or 15 years ago. So I decided to go with a more trail shoe. They are amazing, and I know I'm getting the what it is wrong. There's a there's Solomon in the name, and there's a six, and so I will link to that. Uh, but these were fantastic on our practice hikes. We were going on rocks and things that were wet, no slippage. It was they were great. Um, if you are a hiker or you are a runner or you want to run trails, I highly recommend this shoe. This thing was, they were amazing. When we did hike, you know, we were taking water with us, and on the mammoth marches, what they do is they have uh stops, you know, just like in a race, but you have to bring your own water bottle. So make sure if you do this, you pay attention to all the things that they send you. Download, uh, they had like a guidebook, download that, make sure because if you show up to the sinking, you're gonna hit an aid station and be able to get a glass of water or you know, a cup of water. You are not. You need to bring your own water bottles to this. So we carried our water bottles on the practice hikes, and we did a lot of walking in between, but of course, you know, walking on the pavement, walking on a sidewalk is way different than walking in the woods. We decided to go the day before. So it was about a five and a half hour drive from where we live to where this hike is. And this hike, the Hudson Valley hike, is considered, I've heard, the top three or the hardest. It's one of the hardest ones, and of course, that's the one we decided to sign up for. So we really didn't know what we were getting into. I've hiked, uh, you know, I've hiked all over, but nothing like this. There was a lot going into it that we were just unaware of. We went in the day before, thank goodness, and then got a good night's sleep, and we had to get up early. So with the Mammoth March, you pick what time you want to start. So I don't remember the earliest. It's either 6:30 or like seven o'clock, that has the earliest start time that you can do, and then they do like 15-minute intervals after that that you can pick as your start time, with 8:30 being the last of those times that you can pick. I picked or we picked 8.15, and then you have eight hours to get to a certain point. And I'm assuming it's different with each mammoth march because ours is so hard, you had to get to mile 17 and a half by 4.45 p.m. So whether you started at 7 a.m. or started at 8.15, you had to get to this mile marker by 4.45 p.m. And once that time hit, they would shut that down, and then they you'd all have to go into like a sprinter bus and then be taken back to the start line. We got to this hike, and I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I was thinking that it was gonna be just me and my client just skipping along the trails and you know, having long talks about stuff and just, you know, enjoying the scenery and whatever. And we get to the parking lot, and of course, there's like thousands of people there. So uh already it was like, oh yes, this is this is an event. This isn't just we're not just going hiking, and it had a good breakfast full of carbs. When we got there, there was a very long line to check in because something that this state park had that apparently a lot of the other mammoth hikes don't have is you have to have a bib number. And I think this is the first year that they did this. This is only the second year for the Hudson Valley hike, and I don't think they had the bib thing last year. At least that's what it seemed like with the emails and stuff. And so you had to get into a long line, you had to check in and sign your, you know, I could die, but you're not responsible for that signature thing. And then you had to go and you had to pick up your bib, and it was, you know, broken up into last names. There were some people in that line that it was way past the time that they were supposed to start this. And then after you picked up your bib and pinned it on, then you got into another super long line because they only allow up to five people to go at once, and then there's like a 30-second stagger before they let the next people go through. So that you know, you're there's not a thousand people starting out at this hike at once. And we finally made it to the start. We're released, and you start at a beach, which we were really concerned about at first when we first read that this is where we were starting, because it's like I don't want sand in these shoes for 20 miles, but you actually start on a paved surface, you're not anywhere near the beach. Uh, well, you're not you don't start on the sand or at the beach uh itself. There's a area that's paved right along it, and that's where you start. So you walk through and you start going along, and it's really well marked, except apparently in the earlier when it first started, some goofball decided to change the signage so that people were going the wrong way right off the bat. I don't know who did that, obviously, but idiocy, just just complete idiocy. They figured it out, and then by the time we got to that point, we didn't have an issue. It was already changed and started. So we started off and you know, we were going along. I would say the first four miles was was pretty easy. It was in the woods, thank goodness, because it was obviously getting hotter and hotter as the day goes on, but it was it was pretty good. Now, one thing that I would recommend is that you make sure you know when the uh aid stations are going to happen. I knew that there was going to be four aid stations. So in our heads, we're like, okay, well, every four miles there's going to be an aid station. Well, the first one didn't happen until we were seven and a half miles into that hike. They have to set it up, obviously, based on where roads are so that they can drive all the stuff to the certain checkpoint. That was the first one that made sense. So it was about seven and a half miles in before we got to an aid station. Now they had a lot of snacks and protein bars, and you filled up your water bottle there. And then they also had electrolyte tablets that you could also use. They had porta potties at each one, which was awesome. And the aid stations, I would say, were really, really well stocked with a lot of different things. Now, the only complaint that I had, and this is probably petty, but you know, they said there was gonna be like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as part of the fueling. Well, in my head, I'm thinking like uncrustables or something like that, where you just grab it. There was actually somebody manually making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And both for me and my client, that was kind of like kind of like an ick. I mean, they were wearing gloves, so I will give them that. They were wearing gloves. I don't know why I saw that and just thought, no, but I did not take a sandwich. I took a bunch of other things though, and that gave me enough carbs. Because the other thing that I would say is some of this stuff was quote unquote healthy stuff. So that wasn't high in sugar. As a runner and a marathon runner, I'm thinking, no, put out donuts. Like, give me those simple sugars that are gonna hit my body and give me that energy quickly. I don't want a no-sugar bar that tastes like sawdust when I still have 13 more miles to go in this hike. That's actually gonna take twice as long as a marathon. So, anyway, we were on our way. People were already dropping out at that point. This one was very, very rocky. So you are on, even in the paths that are draight, it's very, very rocky. But because you're in the Catskill Mountains, it's also there's a lot of elevation to it. You're you're going up a lot or down, you know, either direction, especially when you're my age. Either direction is not fun. Not a lot of stability. I honestly would not recommend you just try to do this in sneakers, get something that is hiking specific so that it's grippy and that you are able to uh get through it on some unstable territory. So we made it to the next stop, and that was just water. I think there were a few snacks there that we grabbed and then started out, and I want to say it's that one or the next one. Some somewhere in like the 12, 13 mile mark, there were a whole bunch of other people that were going home or going back to the start. There were people we we go forward from the aid station, and there were people that had actually turned around and were heading back to the aid station where you could get a sprinter van. So that's the other thing that you need to know about this is you have to be prepared to either go and make it to the next aid station or turn around to head back to the previous one. You are not going to get a sprinter van otherwise. Now, they do have sweeper, they have a uh this one had one sweeper guy, so he was in the back making sure that everybody was getting through. And then what the bib did was every time you came into an aid station, they would write down your number so that they knew that you got to each aid station and that at the end of the thing, if you were still out there, they would actually know that you were still out there. But they made it very clear that if you leave an aid station, you are not going to be able to quit until you got to the next aid station. So uh there were a lot of people that would turn around and head back fairly quickly after we would leave an aid station because I think they started back out and realized they they weren't gonna make it. It was getting difficult. Like I said, there was a lot of uphill, there were some switchbacks, there were some scrambling up of just it was just rocks. Some people had the walking poles. We did not take walking poles. I think if you're used to them, that was probably something that you would want. We didn't practice with them. I've never used them. I think if I had tried to use it fresh off of never using it on this hike, I would have had no clue. I would have, you know, folded them up and ditched them or put them in my backpack because yeah, it I I don't think I'd be able to use them the way they're supposed to be used. It was just too rocky. A lot of this hike, we were in front or behind each other. It was not very wide. The path was not very wide. Now it was a beautiful, beautiful hike. It was, you know, there were times when you'd come across the uh you were to be at the top of a mountain and could, you know, see out for a long, long time. It was absolutely gorgeous. But towards the end of it, we just don't care. You're just you're just trying to get through. And we had to get to 17 and a half, like I said, by 445. I thought we had to get there by mile 17. And we hit mile 17 and there was no station, there was nobody. And then my client was like, No, I think they said mile 17 and a half. So then I started panicking. It was probably after four o'clock at this point. We were slowing down, and once you got to that checkpoint, you could take, they would figure that you were going to get to the end before sundown. So you could relax a little bit more after that because they weren't gonna pull you off. There was really nobody to pull you off the trail if you once you hit that 17.5. But the problem is you have to go 17 and a half miles before you get to that point. So uh we were we were just booking it, you know, we were just trying to pass people, which is the other problem when it's only a straight path without a lot of give um to the left or the right. They say you use, you know, hiking etiquette and say to your left, but there were a lot of points where there wasn't a left to be had. Not that like there was a cliff or anything, but there was just you weren't on the path. It's hard to describe, but it would be very difficult sometimes to pass people the way that we were. And every once in a while, then some the leader of the pack would turn around and see all these people behind them and get off the trail so that people could pass by. So we really booked it and we got to the 17 and a half mile point at like I think 412 between 420 and 425. So we were good. We didn't, you know, we made it. There were uh there was a huge circle of chairs actually, and there were people just giving up at that point. They were waiting for the sprinter van to take them back to the start. I was like, there is no way I am not getting that metal after getting to 17 and a half miles. I mean, to me, we are almost to the end point. We're not stopping. So we we kept going. And right after that, or be around mile 18, oh my goodness, there was an incline. It was just pure rock, pure rock. And it was like, it wasn't straight up, but it felt straight up at that point. There were there were people that were going up it and then stopping to rest. And I was just like, there, if you stop, you're done. Your your legs are gonna cramp up, you're gonna, you're gonna freeze and not be able to go any further. I'm like, we are, we're hitting it. We're going. We went up and we just kept going and kept going until we got to the top, and then we could take a breather. And then every time we thought this has to be the last incline, we have to be starting back down the mountain because we're ending up on a beach again. We were ending up back where we started. There'd be another incline. We were we were done for sure. And then we on the last probably mile and a half, you were just kind of out on the road, uh, walking along the road and the grass, kind of like the the way a car would go to get to this place that we were going to end. When we saw the finish line, we were both, let's just go. And so we started running and ran out that last probably 300 yards. Miraculously enough, it actually felt really, really good to stretch those legs and not be in a walking position anymore and kind of run to the finish. We got our medals, we were done. I do not remember how long it took us. They don't chip it, it's not for a time. This isn't a race. And we didn't, we didn't want a countdown or we, and we wanted to be able to rely on our GPS if necessary. Because the self-service wasn't great out there. So I have all trails, and so I'm able to download the off GPS thing if we needed it. And we didn't want to use up our watch energy by tracking it. So we didn't put it in as like a workout or anything like that. A lot of what we went through is mental, just like the just like a marathon, half marathon, whatever race, hard race you're doing, it's mental. There's a lot of we want to quit, but we got to keep going. Let's just keep going, let's just do this. I did get a few blisters, but not a ton. It was a very strenuous hike. I highly recommend doing a mammoth march. I think it's awesome. I don't know that I would recommend doing this one. After it was all over, my client and I were like, it's so annoying that people who haven't done this particular one will never know how difficult it actually is. And, you know, what those rocks do to your body. The difference in what my body, how my body felt after this versus say a long run, is mostly was mostly in like the quad area from going downhill, like the shoulder blade area from carrying a pack, which is why doing practice hikes I find so necessary uh for training for this. Just my feet. My feet hurt so much more than what they feel like in a long run. Now, I do think that training for a marathon was probably helpful in the hike. You know, I'm mentally prepared to go for long distances. I'm using my legs all the time and like doing strength training for running, and that helps a lot with hiking, although there were some differences in what I prescribed for strength training for the hike than I would for like running a marathon. I do think that my marathon training helped my hike. Now, the question actually is is did doing this hinder my marathon training? So I was really, really nervous about that. And I had a run scheduled. So we ran we hiked on a Saturday, and I had a my long runs, I usually do on Mondays. So the Monday after the mammoth march, I just went out to run. I didn't prescribe myself any mileage to get through. Luckily, it was a down week as far as running uh mileage goes. I was able to run 10 miles and run it r well with not, you know, a lot of pain, no pain actually. I feel like I bounced back quickly and I was really, really nervous about my glutes, piriformis area, groin. I'm gonna do a whole podcast on some of what's been going on with that and what I've discovered with that and why that's been alleviated, but that's going to be in another uh episode. I think it enhanced both. I think I think doing both things at the same time helped because it's all endurance, right? There may have been a time where that would have really, really hindered my marathon training, but I think it ended up being all okay. And then a week after I had a 20-mile run and it was good. It came out, I I did really well. So that fear that it was gonna ruin my marathon training is gone. I I feel like I'm recovered now from the hike, thinking about my next one. Uh, I'm not gonna do the Hudson one. I there's one near me, Letchworth State Park, that I'm looking at maybe doing with some of my in-law kids and my own kids and uh trying to get through that one, which isn't until 2026. So that leads me kind of to should marathon runners do events like this during training? Now, this is not something that I would have ever recommended anybody do. I spur of the moment decided to do this fall marathon while doing the uh Mammoth March training because I did want to get that other marathon in. Now, that being said, and because I went through this, I don't know. I I guess I it would depend on the person. It it depends on the person. Now I've been running marathons for eight years. I've been running for 20 years, I've been running marathons for eight years, and so I'm pretty well versed in endurance. And there's been years I've done two marathons in that year and things like that. So endurance is something I like to do, and my body is pretty used to that. So for me, I think that is something that I can handle. I can handle a hike, a 20-mile hike, also the you know, training for a marathon, and I think it would just all around just added to the endurance portion of my training. I think this was actually pretty good cross-training. It threw variety into that. It translated to me being comfortable with doing a 10-mile run two days later. I probably would have run about 14 miles that day because I did the 20-mile hike. It was like, okay, well, you know, that's at least the equivalent, if not more. So for cross-training, I really thought that this worked really, really well. When you do something like this hike that's different than what you normally do, you can see in yourself, number one, how the mental aspect that you've been training yourself for so long uh with marathon training can translate to another endurance sport, but also how you have to adapt. And sometimes though those same strategies don't work. I mean, when you're running a marathon, you know in your head, especially if you've run ones before, how much more time you have left. When you're doing an eight-hour hike, or in our case, I think it was closer to a nine-hour hike. That's a lot longer of a time. So you do have to put in different strategies. So it just adds to your mental capacity for getting you through these things. It also shows that you can balance doing some of these events, even if you don't get in every single training aspect that you were trying to go for. In the beginning, we did really well. We were doing like seven-mile walks, and then every three weeks we would go for a hike. So the first hike was five miles, then we would do walking for a couple weeks, and then we did a 10-mile hike. The 10-mile hike really, really is what pulled us through because we were going to do a 15-mile hike a few weeks before the 20-mile hike and then kind of taper. The 15-mile hike didn't happen because a whole lot of life stuff was going on uh with both of us. But that 10-mile hike getting through that really helped our mental understanding of what this hike was going to be like and also gave us this confidence boost. So I would never recommend going into this 20 mile hike blind where you have done zero training. Some of the other people that did it, it was. Pretty clear that they did not do any training for it. And the you know, they were the ones that dropped out between mile four and mile 12, let's say. Because this isn't shipped, I don't think there's any statistics on how many people started versus how many people finished. I don't know what that looks like, but it just felt like there were a lot of people that dropped out. So some training is very necessary. And I'm actually putting together a training package for people who want to train for the Mammoth March with strength training and practice hikes and how to get familiarize yourself with gear and all that kind of stuff, just because it did have quite an impact in what me and my client were able to do versus what some other people were do were able to do or not do. So I would really recommend doing this. I think it's great for cross-training if you are a runner and you run some marathons. Now, that being said, don't sign up for one that's a week before your marathon. I would say that based on my training, my marathon training, and what I still have to do in the next month, that was probably the cutoff for me. I would not want to like today go hike 20 miles and then in four weeks have a marathon. It blended very well with where I was in my training. And that's the other thing I would say as well is if you're going to sign up for one and you're also training for something for a longer distance, like a half or a marathon, look at where that falls in your marathon training so that you can balance out, you know, where your long runs are. Because what running 10 miles did teach me a cut two days after is that you are using your muscles a bit differently. And so you still need to get those long runs in. So just be mindful of that if you decide to do it, or if you don't have any any training thing on the schedule, any marathons or you know, halves or whatever, then go ahead and look at that schedule and challenge yourself with this 20-mile hike if that is something you want to do. It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of people that are starting out, a lot of camaraderie. It's different than like a race. There's no spectators. Like it's not like you can come with your crew and then they're gonna plant themselves unless they go to one of the uh aid stations. But even then, that's gonna be a very quick go potty, you'll get your snack, you get you fill up your water bottle, and you're on your way. So that is a bit different. There were a lot of people actually that did this on their own, which surprised me. I was so glad that I had my girl with me because you are able to talk, pull each other on, and have some accountability. Some of these people who were doing it on their own, that mental game with this one must have been really, really grueling because it was it was a lot. So keep that in mind if you sign up for one. That if you're gonna do this on your own, you are really on your own. You know, bring headphones or whatever because you you're gonna be with yourself for a long period of time. So that's it. That's my recap of the Mammoth March. It was fun, it's like giving birth during it. It was awful. And I didn't, I we kind of threw our hiking shoes to the side and didn't ever want to look at them again. But here I am two weeks later, and I'm already looking forward to the next one. And if you are interested in more information, uh follow the link in the show notes to the Mammoth March. You can ask me any questions you want about it, and I will give you my answer honestly. And you have questions about whether it's something you should be doing based on where you are in your running life, you can also shoot me an email and I will answer that from a coaching perspective uh to the best of my ability.