I am currently sitting in a cute bakery and deli in Golden, BC, Canada. Meanwhile, my husband is on a 7-mile hike in Kootenay National Park. We have a day and a half left of our two-week trip to the Canadian Rockies and I’m spending some time reflecting on the trip, experiences, and some learnings throughout.
Leading up to our trip…
I have a history of challenges with my left ankle. The challenges were present since birth but ultimately continued to get worse leading to a surgery in early 2022. Unfortunately about 3 weeks before our trip to the Canadian Rockies I rolled my ‘good’ (non-surgically altered right) ankle. I wasn’t paying attention and was rushing to my car after work. I stepped off the curb at the wrong spot and didn’t quite make it off the curb to step on a flat surface. Immediately I was disappointed, thinking of all the ways it could ruin our trip to Canada.
I was also incredibly stressed at work during this time. My working hours were significantly higher than usual. Ultimately this led to a lot of tears and disruption to my normal routines. Originally, I had planned to up my cardio hours on the stairmaster and sled at the gym to prepare for our big hiking trip. Between my rolled ankle and the significant number of hours I was working, that didn’t happen. I was feeling all of the physical, mental, and emotional stress leading up to our vacation. My WHOOP data showed I was in high stress multiple hours per day (outside of exercise) and my daily strain was up to 14+ without a workout. I couldn’t wait to be in the mountains for two weeks.
From a perfectly laid hiking plan to spontaneous rest and flexibility
We had been planning our trip to the Rockies for a few months, planning to hit three National Parks over a two-week long trip. Our itinerary included about 80 miles worth of day hikes and one or two rest days built in. I’ve said this before but I consider myself and my husband to be “ultra planners”. We plan out every detail of our trips so we hit all the spots we want to see. Nothing was different about this one. As you can tell with our 80 miles of planned hikes, we really like to pack in the miles and see as many trails as possible.
I knew going into this trip that things might have to be different. I’ve just recently shared my journeys about Learning How to Rest and My Gratitude Journey, and this trip particularly highlighted these areas again. As you can tell from my description of how I was feeling going into this trip, I was not feeling very rested and I was pretty frustrated about my rolled ankle. Rest and gratitude are two areas that are hard for me. Because of my recently published blog posts on these topics, these areas were top of mind. Vacation gave me a lot of time to reflect on my life and how I’m continuing to grow in rest and gratitude.
As I’m sitting here this morning, I’ve hiked around 31 miles. If all goes well with tomorrow’s planned hike it will be around 38 for the trip. I’ve seen incredibly beautiful views including mountains, alpine lakes, and lots of wildlife. And while it’s not what I expected this trip to look like, as I sit here reflecting, I am grateful for how this trip turned out.
My least expected learning: Rest
Because of my rolled ankle and because I have a great manager at work, I was able to prioritize rest for a full two weeks.
- Yes, I still hiked on a sprained ankle, but hiking in the mountains IS restful to me.
- My manager encouraged me to not bring my laptop or look at anything work-related during my two week vacation.
- I kept my phone on airplane mode and Do Not Disturb almost the full two weeks. I only used WiFi at our Airbnb’s and turned on service and notifications when my husband was out hiking by himself.
- The month prior to our vacation I decided to take the entire month off from my personal social media. I have done this occasionally in the past when I feel I need a reset. Sometimes it’s because I’m spending too much time on social media, or I know I have a busy month coming up that needs focus, or I know I’m trying to use social media to avoid doing things I need to do! The time off from social media always reminds me of what’s most important to me and helps me stay grounded. This was another reason why I was able to rest well during vacation.
- I had plenty of time for prayer and journaling. This was a much needed addition to my rest and recovery time.
My WHOOP data from vacation: I needed this rest and recovery!
While I am definitely feeling the benefits of my almost two weeks prioritizing rest, I also have some data to back it up. I have a WHOOP band, which tracks my sleep, stress, strain, and recovery each day. I also religiously fill out my WHOOP journal each morning. This allows WHOOP to use my data to help me understand which behaviors help and hurt my recovery.
- I had seven days during vacation where > 50% of my time was spent in low stress. This happened four days in the entire previous month. I could feel this difference in stress level throughout vacation! I wasn’t tense, it was easy to fall asleep, and I didn’t have any anxious feelings.
- WHOOP calculates your sleep performance (as a percentage) each morning. This is the amount of sleep you actually got, compared to the amount of sleep you needed. Every single night of vacation I achieved 85%+ sleep, including four nights of 100% sleep. I had been averaging 80% for the last four months straight. Based on my WHOOP insights, I know that 85%+ sleep performance helps my recovery by an average of 6%! As you’ll see in the next bullet point, I was in the green for recovery much more often than my recent average.
- I had 9 green recoveries (out of 15 total days) on this trip. Looking back, I only had 5 green recoveries the entire previous month prior to vacation. Green recoveries aren’t common for me after high-strain hiking days, so this goes to show how much rest and recovery I was able to build into the trip.
- Since I used my WHOOP journal to track that I was on vacation, WHOOP has shown that being on vacation positively impacts my recovery by an average of 7%!
A needed lesson in spontaneity and flexibility
Because of my rolled ankle and because I have an amazing husband, we had some great lessons in spontaneity and flexibility this trip! For people who like to have the majority of our trips pre-planned, it’s always a humbling reminder that spontaneity and flexibility can bring a lot of joy and fun to our day.
- We moved around hikes, found new hikes, completed only partial hikes, my husband hiked on his own some days, and some hikes we just skipped altogether. Of course there’s a little disappointment that comes with missing some trails we had pre-planned. It was a nice change of pace to feel that we were able to give ourselves some grace and change up our plans whenever we needed to, even if it was a few minutes before we were supposed to leave. We even hiked in four national parks instead of three because of our flexibility.
- We saw so much wildlife! 15 bears, a bull moose, 10 mountain goats, and lots of sheep and elk. We are early birds, and being out at dawn or dusk definitely helps with animal sightings. We actually saw the majority of animals from the car! If it weren’t for my rolled ankle, our flexibility, and driving more than hiking, we might have missed a lot of cool wildlife sightings.
Always present, rarely acknowledged: Gratitude
I am great at complaining, and not as great at practicing gratitude. It’s a continuous journey for me! Even with my rolled ankle, I have an immensely long gratitude list for our two-week Canadian Rockies trip. In addition to resting and spontaneity which I’ve already described…
- I am grateful for my husband. He carried all our bags into our Airbnb’s, he drove the entire trip, and he never complained about our changes in plans or hiking slower than usual.
- I am grateful I had a supportive brace lying around from my left ankle problems, that I could repurpose for my right ankle.
- I am grateful I had trekking poles and microspikes. They allowed me to hike more miles faster than I would have been able to without them.
- I am grateful that my left leg had to be my primary leg. Ever since I had surgery, I continued to favor my right leg. This trip I had to favor my left. It may seem like a small thing, but I hope this is the first step to ensuring both legs are equal in strength in the future!
- I am grateful I had extra free time. We watched Suits and I journaled more than usual. I also wrote a new blog post and researched many more topics for Responsible Journey, and I even read two books for fun!
Back to normal
As I finish up this blog post, I am back home and slowly getting back into my normal routine. It’s always hard coming back from vacation. This time, I feel like I left my job in way more chaos than normal. It has added an extra layer of stress as I’m trying to get back into the swing of things. I had a major case of the Sunday Scaries the night before my first day back at work.
Ultimately when that first Monday rolled around, it wasn’t that bad. Nothing fell apart and people got along just fine without me there. Sure, there’s a lot to catch up on. Sure, there were a lot of things I needed to get done that first week back. But I promised myself that I would get back into things slowly. I don’t want to end up in the place I was prior to vacation where rest was the furthest thing from what I felt.
Here are some of the things I’m doing to help myself not get to an overwhelmed state again.
- Using the “Sorry, I’m still catching up from being on vacation for two weeks!” excuse for as long as I can.
- Logging off or leaving work at 5pm regardless of where I’m at for the day. What I don’t get done today will most certainly be there tomorrow.
- Getting back into my routine of morning workouts, but giving myself grace when I need some extra rest. I took two unplanned rest days this week because I needed it.
- Getting back into my routine of tracking my macros and ensuring I’m fueling my body in the best way.
- Not worrying about some things on my to do list like Duolingo, completing our Bible study, and mobility training. I’ll add these in when I’m ready.
- Trying my best to stick to my time limit on social media.
- Making sure I build in time for prayer and journaling in the mornings before work.
Rest and gratitude look different in different seasons
We are all on our own journeys. Rest and gratitude are two things I constantly struggle to maintain, and I wanted to share how these areas ebb and flow throughout different seasons of my life. I think both are incredibly important, but I recognize that we can’t implement all the best practices all the time. We have to change what we do in different seasons, and recognize when a practice isn’t working like it used to or isn’t serving us in a new season of life. I am no expert, but I hope my reflections from my recent travels may help you navigate your current season of life.
