How long and how often you stop during a hike is very goal dependent. However, an Australian study may hold the answer if you are wanting to stay at your optimal condition through out the day.
Check out this 'Aussie Top Up Strategy'.
The study gave a group of athletes various eat, drink and rest schedules, and closely monitored each patients' body for signs of fatigue, dehydration and discomfort.
Optimal schedule:
Stop every hour for 5 min (only) during streneous physical activity: eat, drink, and rest during the break. After the fist hour you will drop to 90% your optimal condition and bounce back to 95% by the end of the 5 min rest. When following this schedule, after 3 hours you will have only dropped to 85% (bouncing back to roughly 90% after the rest). As 9 hours rolls around you will still be operating at 70% of your optimum. Even at 12 hours expect to be functioning above 60%.
Compare this to another scenerio. The atheletes in this trial rested for 15 min every three hours. By the time they reached their first rest, atheletes were only functioning at 70%. After the 15 min break they did rebound to 80% only to plunge 50% by their next rest at hour 6. By hour 9, 30% and around 10% at 12 hours.
The obvious but interesting observation is that in both scenerios, the actual duration of rest is the same.
I will be trying out this strategy for my next few trips.
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