Bay Area Ridge Trail Training
An overview of my preparation for my Bay Area Ridge Trail FKT
Oct 2024 - Apr 2025
I can’t remember exactly when I set my sights on the Bay Area Ridge Trail (BART) FKT, but Anthony and I had been threatening to do it for years. There was a whole lot of talk on my end over the years, but I hadn’t gone for a truly savage effort since Lowest to Highest in 2018 or the aborted unsupported attempt of Western States in 2020 with the exception of a few heinous days in the Sierra.
So, sometime in 2024, I resolved to actually go for the BART speed record. I picked a start date in April—which Anthony wisely told me to push back a week to line up with the full moon—and then crafted a training plan. I’m employed these days, so I was unable to take off large swaths of time for training. This forced me to mainly rely on running and gym workouts for training, fitting in short backpacking trips whenever possible. Also key to preparation was section hiking the entire trail in order to collect every possible piece of relevant information for the FKT attempt. On top of getting beta, I would be scouting out alternate sections of trail since the “official” route at the time passed through private property. I have to give a huge thanks to Anthony for mapping these alternates, and generally being an indispensable help during the build up to the event.
Below I’ll cover the following aspects to my training regiment: running, backpacking and route scouting, and diet.
Running
This was the core of my preparation for the hike. In the fall and winter of 2024, I started building up a good base of weekly miles. I was mountain biking and climbing a lot too which probably helped with holistic fitness. Towards the end of December, I transitioned to mostly running, trying to get out between five to six days a week. We’re lucky enough to have some wonderful trails with tons of elevation right behind our cabin, so I hammered laps out on those as my go-to runs.
I ramped up the distance week-over-week to a peak of about 60-70 miles per week during the core of my training. This was super time consuming and took over my life for a while, as I’d have to go on multiple two, three, and four hour runs after work during the week and often even longer runs on the weekend. I never ran particularly fast, save for my shorter flat runs through town, the goal was to build resilience in my legs, feet, and mind. A blessing in disguise came in January as I was ramping my regimen up in the form of rupturing my middle finger’s A2 pulley while climbing one day. This meant I couldn’t climb, bike, work in the yard, or do much else. So I was singularly focused on running.
Another wrinkle was stepping on a giant nail in the yard in March. I was hardly able to walk for a week but after ten days, I started doing some short runs. This seriously scuppered my plans, and I was worried the injury would derail the whole effort. But I recovered. I supplemented my running with at least two days of lower body strength training in the gym. I also stretched for about half an hour every night.
Backpacking
The other core aspect of my training was backpacking as these efforts obviously more closely mimicked what I’d actually be doing on my FKT. I had section hiked a bit of the Ridge Trail with Anthony over the years, but in the fall of 2024, I started section hiking the Ridge Trail in 2-3 day chunks clockwise from the Golden Gate. I did this over 4 trips, the last one being only a couple weeks before the FKT attempt. On these hikes I made meticulous note of streams, water faucets, bathrooms, potential camping spots, grocery stores, gas stations, and areas of note like sketchy road walks or crossings. I also gradually stepped up the intensity of these hikes, starting with 30 mile days, and ending with 50 mile days on the last section hike. The trips were as follows:
- San Francisco to Novato
- Novato to Fremont
- Fremont to Saratoga Gap
- Saratoga Gap to San Francisco
On these trips I also confirmed that certain sections of the original FKT route were indeed trespassing, and I tested out all of the alternate routes that Anthony and I had planned out to make sure they went without a hitch.
On top of these trips, I spent a some time in Eureka Valley doing some big days with Anthony in March. We traversed a beautiful section of the northern Last Chance Range for three days and then I did a big one day effort through the Saline Range. I felt a surge of confidence after the Saline loop, as I cleared over forty miles of mostly off-trail terrain in one day.
While on these hikes, I also dialed in my gear. The biggest change I made was to hike with a fanny pack I found on the street as a snack bag. This allowed me to constantly eat, and every few hours I could fill it while still on the go. I also decided to bring my 48L MLD bag instead of the Palante Joey, as the hip belt allowed me to shift the weight between my hips and shoulders during the course of a long day.
Diet
The final major component to training was a good diet. I ate an incredible amount of food while training: usually breakfast at dawn, second breakfast mid-morning, lunch, dinner, lots of snacks, and two protein shakes on a regular day. I tried to eat minimally processed, whole foods when I could.
I have struggled with a knee issue for over five years now, so glucosamine and collagen supplemented my diet. I took these every day in the few months leading up to the hike. I’ve since backed off consumption of those two supplements as I have the sense that too much of anything probably isn’t too good for you. However they likely helped my joints during my brutal training and of course the FKT itself.
Conclusion
That more-or-less summarizes the broad strokes of my preparation for the trail. At times it felt all-consuming, but I had a lot of fun gearing up for the effort. I spent an incredible amount of time outside and still was able to hold down work at the same time.
I am also fortunate in that Lexi not only permitted this heinous project of mine, but supported me the whole time. There were many days when I was feeling lazy or tired that she all but kicked me out of the house to stick to my training plan, for that I’ll always be grateful.