It’s 1:53am in Canada, I’m dealing with jet lag and now we seem to have also forced our dog into jet lag mode as well. Charlie put his nose in my face and let me know this was a potentially urgent situation as he woke me from my sleepy lull. A beautiful brisk Fall night greeted us, crunchy leaves, a sky full of magic starbursts and a dog who seems to think it was 8am instead of 2am. One of those moments you pause to take in but don’t expect it to become inspiring.
I am now happily wide awake in a house that is perfectly quiet and without distractions. I could plop my butt on the couch and watch some guilty pleasure shows until my Adventure Buddy wakes or I could open my laptop and use this time to log into my blog and write. It’s been a while!
I couldn’t even remember my password! Then I login to find some lovely comments that needed attention. I cringe thinking this isn’t how to manage a following. When was the last time I wrote a post? 3 years! Why? Starting a business, using my social platforms more for short form blogging … and, working on a book that I’m not yet sure what it’s really about or where it’s going LOL
I miss this blog and some have told me they do as well. In this new world of AI where fake stories create scrolling marathons, I for one, want to hear real stories and be inspired by actual humans who are living real moments.
Here goes! Where one seemingly uninspiring, personal goal led me.
December 2023, I began following the association page of a hiking club I’m a member and I hike with regularly – Ganaraskas Hiking Association. There were members posting their hikes and counting them. As a goal loving person I had to learn more. It turns out they have a program to inspire others to get out in nature that rewards members and non-members for sharing and tracking their hikes – 50, 100, 150, 200 and even a custom reward for a couple of complete badasses doing 250 hikes in a year. The rules were very simple, track 1 hour hikes, post and share and you too could become the recipient of a badge at the end of the year.
For 2024 I initially decided to just track my hikes. At that point, I had no idea how many ‘hikes’ I actually do in a year but I sure know that Charlie could have me lolly gagging for 2 dog walks a day chatting with neighbours and his many friends along our country road. My goal would have to include mileage and I didn’t want to count normal dog walks since I already do those daily. I set my own criteria. I would track a minimum of 5km+ hikes for 2024.
I might be considered radical here, even by my fellow Canadians, but I LOVE winter hiking. Bundle up in layers, wear icers when needed, there are no bugs and you can easily track animals in the snow. I started the year strong and managed to hike 35 days in a row from Jan 1st.
This goal was already helping me build confidence to hike local forest trails alone in the winter and it became my refuge on nice winter days. When I was able to take Charlie, he loved it and it was so easy to watch his black coat through the white landscape.
When September came I landed on the goal of 100 hikes #100hikesin2024 I ended the year completing 101 hikes totalling 620 km, https://www.instagram.com/p/DEOKAFYPOym/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Most of these hikes would not have happened without tracking then the goal! It also inspired me to join a couple more hiking groups, expand my hiking friend roster and get my grown family out for hikes when they came to visit. Even our 2024 vacation to Dominica revolved around hiking on “The Nature Island’. It became a real win-win for experiences and living a healthy lifestyle.
What I discovered in my initial 2024 tracking was that between Mothers Day and mid September I didn’t do a single hike! 4 months. That really surprised me since I am so active all summer but, I’m not a fan of hot hiking, ticks are a thing in Ontario and there are so many other things to do on our waterfront property in the summer months including welcoming many overnight and weekend visitors. Not having the ‘pressure’ of hiking a high number allowed me to see my true patterns and figure out how I wanted to move forward.
By December, I was already thinking – ‘okay this year was an experiment’ – if I want to begin end-to-end trail hiking in Ontario, I will need to add summer hiking.
My goal for 2025 would need to stretch me more! #200hikesin2025 with the initial distance goal of 5+km’s. We were planning a trip to Vietnam, “Google, what’s the highest mountain in Vietnam?”. It was time to test our mountain legs again after a much delayed pandemic recovery cycle. My hiking would need to include a lot of hills and require me to hike every 1.8 days. Let the tracking and training begin.
The highest mountain in Indochina seemed quite the challenge. Osteo in my knees, feet and ankles was now spreading to my back but I am not one to give into excuses. I am strong and consistently push myself. What I know for sure is not hiking or training creates issues for me. As long as I keep moving I manage with very little pain. Also, taking off pandemic pounds was making a big difference. A very slow process in my 60’s with diabetes and a thyroid disease but focusing on protein and fibre was creating momentum and hiking combined with weight lifting was burning more fat.
March 2025, we trekked up Mt Fansipan over 2 days, slept in a hut and began our sunrise summit in the wee hours of the morning. It was magical! The top is a sacred spiritual sight with temples that only those who climb the mountain at sunrise get to experience alone. There is a cable car on this mountain but it doesn’t start until 7:30am – we had the summit, temple and 600 stairs to the summit all to ourselves because we chose to climb from the bottom.
We did it! Or, “we still got it!”, as I said to my Adventure Buddy. We were both proud and relieved we hadn’t done permanent damage to our bodies and minds with bad habits through the pandemic. In our 60’s, we have more time behind us then ahead of us and were happy to know we can continue to push our limits and maximize our experiences. I know I would NOT have gotten to the top of that mountain without the hiking goals. In fact, it was even a ‘real’ winter in Ontario this year which added to the challenge on hills and it made it a relatively easy goal to conquer for me. I felt super empowered.
It wasn’t long before my Adventure Buddy (he likes that title but his real name is Jeff) was saying, “Simpson, you have to go ping off your dream goal, we ain’t getting any younger”. He said this before my goal oriented brain even had time to process what we just pulled off. Really? Like, this year? There is such a limited window for trekking in Nepal and we’d just spent a month in Vietnam and Cambodia. It didn’t take my head long to rationalize we just had to continue building on our current fitness and we could geterdone!
OMG, Nepal! Everest Base Camp! I have been dreaming about the Himilayas, Kathamandu, EBC for 13 years. Since shortly after Kilimanjaro this quickly became my ultimate trekking goal. We only live once and I was bound and determined to be strong for an October trek.
The hiking ramped up, more goals were added and my head started manifesting the path to success. My marathoning days really taught me a lot about how to train and I’ve used those principles for every challenge I’ve taken on since whether it be distance walking, climbing, cycling, duathlon etc.
Along the way I increased my mileage goal for 2025 to 1500 km for the year of intentional hikes. This required me to bump up each hike to 8km for the remainder of the year, anything less and I would hike it but just wouldn’t count it. This has also had me scouring hiking club schedules and becoming a hike leader in 2025 in order to hit my training goals.
Check out Sole Sister Ramblers with groups all over the world if you’re a 45+ woman looking for some great experiences in nature and beyond.
So why do you think I’m jet lagged this morning?
Well, I just returned from Nepal 🙂
It all began with one harmless, simple goal.
The momentum of simply tracking my hikes has led me here, just about to turn 63 and standing on the top of the boulder at Everest Base Camp.
There are many hidden goals in that one harmless goal. In 2025, I not only summitted Mt Fansipan in Vietnam, I was able to complete 2 sections of an end-to-end trail during a blazing hot summer, climb Ha Ling Peak in Alberta, become a hike leader for 12 hikes and spent 10 days climbing in the Himilayas to reach Everest Base Camp baby!
Where else can I go? What other limits can I dispell? I’m at 169 hikes for 2025 with 1318km’s. Whatever my new ultimate goal becomes, it will only be one harmless goal away 😉
More to come on Nepal. This goal deserves it’s own post!
What harmless goal are you going to create to amp up your life? #geterdone #doepicshit #63rising
karengeterdone 
Kiera Bauer
She’s back, baby! Loved seeing the email notification that you created a new blog post! You inspire me everyday and I’m so proud of you!
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karengeterdone
Thanks Kiera!
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