Hi Bulldog34, since mid-December last year I've been running (about 3 times a week), and hiking. The initial motivation was to lose some weight, my belly had grown due to bad diet and no exercise for several years other than surfing once or twice a week.
The running has been pretty low mileage and for the most part low intensity. Weekly mileage starting in December was under 10 miles and now it's about 15 miles, including a little bit of trail running, and more recently intervals at the track once a week. I did a handful of races too (e.g. 5Ks).
Mt. Whitney wasn't really on the radar until March or April, so until then my hiking consisted of 3-6 mile hikes, once a week or once every other week. In April, I started doing longer hikes; these were the main training hikes, in order:
April
Mt. Woodson
Hastings Peak
Mt. Lowe
May
Icehouse Saddle
Mt. Baldy (via Devil's Backbone)
June
Mt. Baldy (via Ski Hut trail)
Tahquitz Peak
San Bernardino Peak
Anderson Peak
Mt. Baldy (via Register Ridge)
Green Mountain (Boulder, CO)
I went hard on the training hikes; pace was typically 20-21 minutes/mile on the shorter hikes and 23-24 minutes/mile on the longer, higher elevation hikes (except on the steeper Baldy trails!). The longest training hike was 16 miles (San Bernardino Peak). I spent a week in Boulder with the family a week before the Whitney hike; we spent a couple hours above 10,000 feet one day, walking around a lake. There was also the acclimation hike on the Kearsarge Pass trail mentioned in my first post.
The pace on Whitney felt really comfortable, I wasn't trying to meet any time goals. Your calculation of 5:15 hiking time to the summit is accurate; I spent a half hour on the summit so it was just a little over 5 hours on the way down (the rain affected the pace on the descent).
