The returning runner…

Act 60 – The Old Hill

It was hot, in the low 90s when I started and climbing. My “go to” hard workout was to do 12 reps up the long hill on the northwest side of Huffaker Hill. It was a brutal 230 yards. Not as long as the 315 yard hill I run frequently now at Rancho San Rafael Park, but much steeper – an average of 13% grade with portions 15%. The beginning was slightly flatter – maybe 10% or so. I would try to sprint this portion and my speed would carry me through to the bench that marked the halfway point and the shift to 15%. From there, it was just push hard but no longer anything that resembled a sprint. Today there was a high school team working out on the hill. They were starting a little further up, cutting out the lower, flatter portion for their reps. I was not a match for the top guys but could hang with some of the slower ones. Around 9 reps, they started cheering for me. I needed it. The temps were over 95 now and I was smoked but somehow managed to recover enough on the downhill to gamely sprint the beginning of the next one. The cheering helped…At the completion of 12, I waved goodbye to a rousing cheer. I think they were about done too. It was a good day. My hardest workout that year (2020).

Today wasn’t that day. I had come back for a visit with my old friend. My new work office had lured me away, but I thought I would pay homage on this Sunday afternoon. The snow was no longer an inviting, dry, 3-inch powder carpet but rather a varied mixture of wet soup, slush, some areas of packed nearly icy snow, some mud poking through, and even a few nearly dry gravel spots. I wasn’t going to do the reps today but 4 loops around the hill. Besides the grandaddy on the northwest portion, there were 4 lesser hills on the 1.4-mile loop. Going my planned 4 times around would make 5.6 miles but the paved ramp leading up and down to the loop amounted to another 0.3 miles and that certainly rounded up to 6 miles. I was running through a mess – the large, deep, puddle ahead had clumps of floating snow which I imagined could sink the Titanic. So, rounding up on the mileage was definitely in order. This leads me to introduce a couple of basic runner concepts – the Universal Runner Rounding Method (URRM) and the Modified Universal Runner Rounding Method (MURRM):

URRM – For any tenths of a mile completed which are less than 0.5 show the full mileage in your spreadsheet, log, diary, whatever and for all tenths greater than or equal to 0.5, round up to the next whole mile. For example: 4.3 miles would be recorded as “4.3” whereas 4.5 miles would be recorded as “5.0”.

MURRM – In this method, all tenths of a mile are rounded up to the next higher 0.5 miles. For examples, 4.3 miles would be rounded up and recorded as “4.5” and 4.5 miles rounds up to 5 miles.

Both methods are completely legitimate. Every run has some aggravating factor justifying the rounding: too hot, too cold, too rainy, too snowy, too dry, too hilly, too windy, so flat that it lulls you into a state of lethargy…Try it and watch your mileage climb!

I came across a friend running the opposite direction on the loop. He called out my name but I couldn’t place him and so, just responded with a “hey, hey!”. Definitely a serious runner. You can tell. When it’s in the low 40s the serious runners know that they will get warmed up and no heavy winter gear is necessary. This guy was just in shorts and t-shirt. I regretted the long-sleeved shirt I wore that was now much too hot. I had no zip. Actually, I think I had negative zip. Between splitting a couple of wagons-full of gnarled twisted and knotty wood that morning, pulling the wagon through the foot deep snow in our background had wiped me out pretty good. But, I wasn’t going to let my old friend beat me. I kept it going through the 4 loops.

I’m a genius. I had been driving my wife’s car the previous couple of days for my runs. I had taken my wife’s key off the ring and stuck it in my pocket for this run. Only problem was I drove my car this time. My wife was going to come rescue me. But, it was too cold to stand still waiting.

One more time around… Surely that rounds up to 8 miles…

Photo: Huffaker Hill on Sunday afternoon.