Spring Training; Four Stretches to get You Ready for Another Hiking Season in RMNP

by Dave Rusk

​A week of warm weather at the end of March pushed some early spring Pasque Flowers up. My first sighting was on the 27th. Looking back at my photos of spring Pasque Flowers, the earliest I have photographed them was on March 22, 2015. However, most of the photos I have of Pasque Flowers were taken sometime in April or May.

March 27,2025

Upon seeing the Pasque flowers in the lower elevations of Rocky Mountain National Park, I often feel an emergence of my own, my inner hiker, longing for the trails of summer; even though they are still reporting 53” of snow at Bear Lake, with hopefully more spring snow on the way, I know it won’t be long.

Will I be ready when the trails open up? ​Those early spring flowers are a reminder to prepare; I need to check my gear list, as well as my physical well being.

Over the years, I’ve been very lucky. For all of my many miles on the trail, and a few off-trail days too, I have always started the season and returned from my day hikes without injury. Sometimes I endured sore muscles after a long day, only for the soreness to melt away in the hot shower. 

But overall, I have seldom needed to concern myself with my physical ability to get out and hike. Until last fall.

At the end of some of our longer hike days, I noticed a pang in the bottom of my right foot. Oddly, the pain grew worse after returning home and resting for a bit. I would often limp off for the kitchen, barely able to make it for a coffee cup refill. However, within a day or two the pain subsided and once again I felt ready for the next hike.

After a few more weeks of fall hiking, the pain started coming earlier in the hike day until one day in late October, I was hiking all day with the dull pain. And then it stopped going away! It was time to give my foot a rest.

The pain I was experiencing was determined to be Plantar Fasciitis and the cause was probably the collapsed arch of my hiking boots, which needed replacing anyway. At this point, with the persistent pain hobbling me everyday, I went in search of a solution. My goal was to have it under control for next summer’s hiking season. 

What surprised me was that the solution to the pain in the bottom of my foot was 8 inches away in my calf muscles.

Searching, I first found an exercise where all I had to do was roll a frozen golf ball under my foot, but I experienced no change from doing that. 

A further search lead me to an article by Hiker Guy.com. That article included a 10 year old video on Self Massage for Plantar Fasciitis made by Bruce Mandelbaum. He recommended cross fiber friction, massaging across the calf muscles with the thumbs to break up the fibers. That worked great! Right away I noticed the pain starting to subside.

Wanting to go further, I went for a visit with Patrick Martchink at the Estes Park Physical Therapy. He showed me, among other techniques, how to stand with my feet on a slightly angled up board stretching the calf muscles. Wow! That felt really good too.

I had no idea how good it felt to massage and stretch my calf muscles. I had not recognized the tightness going on with those muscles. But now I stand daily on my slanted board, if only for a few moments, getting a little stretch on my calf muscles while I look out my window, waiting for my coffee water to heat up. 

I wondered what other stretches I might do for other hiking muscles. I had been noticing a little tightness on the top front portion of my legs, the quadriceps, and in particular the rectus femoris I think, especially when hiking on snow and ice or going downhill.  Searching again, I found a video showing the Standing Quad Stretch as demonstrated by Workoutaholic.

Standing on one foot, I bring the other foot back and grab it with my hand. Though not necessary, I bring my free arm straight out to my side. Here I get to practice some balance and grace while also keeping those quads loose.

Others might feel the biceps femoris needing some stretching. I found a number of common stretching technics for working this muscle, but I liked a video showing how to Stretch Your Biceps Femoris made by Upright Health, whose motto is "Pain Sucks, Life Shouldn’t." No argument on that.

A stretching routine I have used on occasion over the years is the Sun Salutation yoga exercise, so beautifully demonstrated in a video by Prabhuji. This is a series of forward and backward bending and breathing exercises that is to be done while facing the morning sun. I have done this most often when I have felt my back is out of whack and this routine was very effective for realigning things. If you are looking for a vitalizing morning warm-up, it is a wonderful whole body experience.

If you want to prepare yourself for a summer of marvelous day hiking, now would be a good time to try to work any one of these four stretches into your daily habits.