Embrace the Suck: A Thru-hiker’s Guide to Beating the Odds in Long-distance Hiking

Completing a thru-hike can be the greatest achievement of one’s lifetime. Unfortunately, most who try fail. Of the 10,000 aspiring thru-hikers who start one of America’s long trails each year, only about 25 percent make it to the end.The sole purpose of Embrace the Suck: Beating the Odds in Long-Distance Hiking is to bring those who might have found themselves in the 75 percent who don’t finish and place them among those who do. If you desire to thru-hike but the task seems daunting, this book is for you.Allow retired U.S. Army Colonel, former business owner, and Triple Crowner, Michael Current, trail name Energizer, to walk you through all aspects of thru-hiking so that you can confidently and systematically prepare for and successfully complete a long-distance trail.To accomplish this task, Current draws upon his over 30 years of military service and having thru-hiked America’s Triple Crown: the Appalachian Trail (which he did twice), the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail.In the book, Current first walks you through a holistic look at thru-hiking, analyzing the endeavor for what it is and what it is not. He then introduces a methodology that has been successful in other professions but never applied to long-distance hiking. Besides his own experiences, Current references other writings focused on long-distance hiking or related topics to underscore the points presented.The supporting exercises listed at the end of each chapter build upon each other, enabling you, the reader, to develop a strategy that addresses all the physical, mental, emotional, financial, logistical, and personal aspects of the hike, based on your own identified strengths and weaknesses, given situation, and the specific tenets of the long-distance trail you have selected.Put simply, Embrace the Suck is the one-stop shop for anyone wanting to succeed at thru-hiking.