About twice a week, sometimes more, I ask myself if I am truly up for the challenge that day: The Hill.
It’s always on my way home, in the final mile of my run, and I can avoid it by making a left turn during the second-to-last mile, going a different way home—the flatter route, the easy way out. Most days I tell myself a story about not taking that easy way, that the route to personal growth is always the difficult one: The Hill.
Some days, though, I am tired. Maybe it’s been a stressful week, maybe I haven’t slept that well for a night or two, maybe I’m dehydrated, or maybe I just don’t feel like pushing myself. I give myself some grace, let myself take it easy, run the flat way home, along 6th Street. And it’s fine. I don’t beat myself up. I just stop my watch, end my run, walk into my house and go about my life.
The Hill is 17 feet high, according Strava, or 13 feet high, according to repeated measurements on my watch. It’s 0.13 mile long, about 200 meters in track terms, or maybe 200-some running strides. As far as running hills go, it’s no Heartbreak Hill of Boston Marathon fame (which rises 88 feet), or Mile 23 of the NYC Marathon (about 90 feet of climbing in a mile). And it is certainly no Mt. Sentinel, the mountain I usually go partway or all the way up and down on my runs—the summit is almost 2000 vertical feet above town.
I like climbing mountains. I like big ascents. I welcome the challenge of steep trails. But this little, 17-foot-high hill, not even really a hill, more just a gentle incline going up from the river, is the worst part of my runs. It is more annoying than daunting. It is driving all day to get home only to get stuck in traffic a mile from your house. It is those paper towel dispensers where you have to pull with both hands, except your hands are wet because you just washed them, so you rip off pieces of the paper towel three times in a row before you either finally get one out of the dispenser or just decide to wipe your hands on your pants. It is the invisible bump in the floor that you stumble on, spilling your too-full coffee after you’ve just managed to carry it all the way across the coffee shop to a table, GOD DAMN IT.
It is 17 feet, not steep enough to justify walking, confoundingly exhausting to run up. There is no Zen koan/clever reason why it is hard even though it shouldn’t be that hard, and maybe no allegorical life lesson, it is just an annoying little hill I have run up 170-plus times.
It is a small, not very interesting mystery of my personal universe, and I do not understand why I choose to or don’t choose to run it. I will probably do it again today, or tomorrow, and definitely a couple times next week, because that’s just what we do, isn’t it?
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