Long Slow Elevation

7.90 miles this morn­ing in 1:34:25.

That’s a pret­ty slow pace, aver­ag­ing about 12 min­utes to the mile. But there are two mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors that give this the feel of glo­ri­ous victory.

1) Well, that is the third longest dis­tance I’ve ever cov­ered. I’ve done eight miles once before and ten miles once before. So this run was a chal­lenge on dis­tance alone.

2) It was a hill­climb. I went from my apart­ment at 175 feet above sea lev­el to the top of the north peak of Twin peaks, just over 900 feet above sea lev­el. For the math-chal­lenged in the audi­ence, that’s 725 feet of ver­ti­cal climb. I talked to my father and accord­ing to the topo­graph­i­cal maps he has on his com­put­er, the route I took includ­ed 900 feet of ver­ti­cal climb­ing. Which I guess is pos­si­ble, but I remem­ber it being just up after a cer­tain point, and then just down the rest of the way home. I don’t recall ever going down­hill just to go back up.

Of course, the view from Twin Peaks is exhil­a­rat­ing. Being on foot meant that even with­out stop­ping there’s a chance to gaze out at the Bay and at the Pacif­ic, and see the Gold­en Gate and down at the Mis­sion and South to San Bruno.

One thing that does not cease to amaze me is how much hard­er the first two or three miles is than the rest. I was ready to give up and walk back home by the time I got to the Glen Park BART sta­tion, which is about a mile from me, and before the climb­ing start­ed. but by the time I reached Por­to­la (2.5 miles in) I knew I could do the next mile and a half uphill. I felt great and ready for more.

I think that’s what I don’t like about 5K runs. It’s just long enough to get through the mis­er­able part and then stop. Psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly that’s dev­as­tat­ing for me. I’d much rather keep run­ning twice as far and end up feel­ing good, with the tough part far behind.

I’m real­ly going to enjoy lunch.

Fringe Author­i­ty—Simon Stinger