TRT: There’s no “right” way to do a route.

One of my favorite things about self-supported or self- created efforts is that there are no rules.

You can do it HOWEVER you want.

You decide on the route. You could even change the route midway.

You pick the day—or days—to go for it.

You have complete flexibility to change the start date because of illness, weather, something coming up in life, or simply because you don’t feel like going anymore.

I’ve done a lot of self-supported & self-created efforts over the years, and they’ve become my favorite way to get out into the mountains. A lot of that boils down to this idea of autonomy.

Being able to call 100% of the shots is fun.

This is something I thought about a lot during my recent effort on the Tahoe Rim Trail.

Living in Carson Valley, the TRT is one of our local trail gems: roughly 174 miles of trail circumnavigating Lake Tahoe, crossing through two states and multiple wilderness areas. Each “side” of the lake—north, south, east and west—has a completely different feel to it.

Over the years, I’ve seen people tackle the TRT in all sorts of ways.

Some go after an FKT (this does involve rules).

Some break it into chunks over the course of a summer.

Some backpack it.

Some fastpack it.

Some “run” the entire thing.

To me, part of the fun is figuring out how to break up a route like this in a way that makes the most sense for YOU.

There is no “right” way to do it.

There’s only doing all 174-ish miles.

One of my athletes hiked the TRT with a hiking group over the course of a summer. Most of their sections were around 20 miles.

Another athlete rented an Airbnb in Incline and ran the trail over six days. Her boyfriend was with her the entire time, and friends joined for a few of the point-to-point sections. Each night, though, she came back to Incline for a shower, good food and a little more quality shut-eye in a real bed.

I met an older man on the trail who told me it took him 10 years to section-hike the entire TRT. He didn’t even realize he was getting close to completing all of it until about seven years in. At that point, he figured he might as well finish the remaining sections.

My friend Rebekah and I have also schemed up doing the TRT “bougie style,” as we’ve dubbed it. We’d get dropped off and picked up each day and stay in four different Airbnbs around the lake. Our husbands would, of course, have meals prepared for us and lug our things from place to place.

Hence the bougie part.

The creativity in how you approach a route like this is part of what makes it fun.

My husband tried to do the TRT over four days back in 2015. He had four days off work and wanted to see if he could complete the entire thing in that timeframe. Unfortunately, he tied his shoes WAY too tight and ended up with tendon irritation across the top of his foot that eventually made it difficult to walk. He stopped at mile 110.

If you’ve been a runner for any significant amount of time, you’ve probably done this to the top of your foot once or twice. It’s surprisingly easy to do—and it hurts.

This year, my husband and I decided to do the TRT over 4–5 days. We wanted to average somewhere between 30–40 miles per day and see how that physically felt with our packs loaded up.

We would need to do roughly 30–35 miles per day on the Sierra High Route, and if we had a hard time hitting those distances on established trail and at a lower elevation, then we needed to rethink our SHR planning.

Unfortunately, on day two, Michael had to pull out.

This time, instead of tying his shoes too tight, they were a little too loose. He ended up with gnarly friction blisters across the balls of his feet and could barely put weight on them.

Our original plan was no longer happening.

And that’s also the beauty of doing these things on your own terms.

There wasn’t a race director telling us what counted. There wasn’t a cutoff. There wasn’t a required itinerary or a specific number of days in which the TRT needed to be completed.

Michael could stop.

I could keep going.

We could change the plan.

And the trail would still be there.

Part of what I love about these types of routes is that no one gets to decide what the experience should look like for you.

Maybe you want to see how fast you can do it. Maybe you want to carry everything you need on your back. Maybe you want a shower and a real bed every night. Maybe it takes you 10 years.

None of those is more legitimate than the other. They’re just different ways of experiencing the same 174 miles.

Different but the same is kind of the point.

You get to decide what experience you’re looking for.

Pick the route. Make up your own rules. Change them if you need to.

Then go do it.

Because doing it is all that really matters.