Aging Adventurously - Lori Balue (Part II)

About this episode

Lori Balue discusses her transformative hiking experiences and personal challenges while returning to the Grand Canyon.

In Part 2, Lori Balue gets into the adventures that prove the work. She's been returning to the Grand Canyon every year since 2016 — first with excruciating knee pain on every downhill step, then progressively stronger, then completing rim-to-rims with ease, then setting her personal best on Bright Angel. The Canyon is her measuring stick. She uses it to track what her body can do now versus what it could do before. This half of the conversation also covers the divorce that happened while she was figuring all of this out, a hiking fatality she witnessed firsthand on Mount Wilson, why she'll never do a full marathon, how she fuels for big days in the backcountry, and what 63-year-old Lori would say to the 12-year-old version of herself who had no idea what was coming. Plus: the hiking hack that gave her a magical lift on Bright Angel, and a shout-out to the national parks she loves enough to ask you to actually pay the entrance fee. If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, start there — it dropped 10 minutes ago.

People in this episode

Hosts: Doc, Bleav

Guest: Lori Balue

Topics covered

• aging
• adventure
• hiking
• personal growth
• outdoor challenges

Keywords

• hiking
• Grand Canyon
• personal best
• knee pain
• backcountry
• marathon
• national parks

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Grand Canyon, Mount Wilson

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