Last August I took a hike up Squaw Peak with a friend only to find out I was too out of shape to walk up hill! In fact the only memories I have of the first hike involves dizziness, strong desire to vomit, signs of heat stroke and extreme hypoventilation to name a few. In the end it took 1 hour and 30 minutes to reach the summit.

Luckily, I survived and was able to crawl back indoors and turn on the air conditioning. After regaining consciousness I started to ask around for other people's times and read a few blogs - all suggested 30 minutes as the benchmark of achievement. Thus began my campaign to conquer squaw peak in under 30 minutes, not to mention the chance to see amazing views of Phoenix:



I'm also happy to announce that as of April 2010, I have a new record of 29 minutes, and 44 seconds. I would like to be at 25 minutes by the end of the year, thus I will continue to keep track of each hike and strive for personal improvement (as if anyone could improve perfection). To help this process I have been timing myself with the help of a time/distance measuring iPhone app, which keeps track of each hike. I recently downloaded the data into an Excel file to see the past 10 months in a visual representation:



Since Phoenix is reaching 100 degree days here in the valley, we hike later in the day from 5 to 7 pm and if anyone wants to join in on the fun just let me know!