When it comes to training for races I had no business signing up for, such as an upcoming Half, I like to add two very different workouts to my weekly routine.
On handy local rail trails, I like to do relaxed out-and-back sessions, heading north or south to the halfway point of my planned distance, then turning around and heading back to base
As I tread along these flat pathways through an endless variety of woodsy real estate, I try to focus on maintaining form, whatever that means, but mainly I end up zoning out as I click off the miles.
As an extreme counterpoint to this mellow workout, I also try to fit in an intense hill session once every week or so.
My current favorite location is the steep climb up a hill on a road named Increase Miller, starting from the bottom at an abandoned water-filled 19th-century marble quarry.
Local users of the Strava app have turned this half-mile monster into an official Strava segment, with a leaderboard and everything. This is both inspiring (I hold the record for my age group) and demoralizing (I am 100 seconds slower than the fastest time).
I’ll attempt four repeat runs up the hill, recovering after each with a super-slow descent and then a minute pause at the bottom before repeating.
As I go up, the hill breaks down into four pitches of varying steepness. Part of the fun is not letting this varying terrain break me down.
The last section is rolling and includes running a good way beyond the top to make sure I’m covering the complete length of the Strava section. I aim for the second telephone pole in front of the gray house with the red door and U-shaped driveway. Then it feels safe to stop.
After four repeats I’m pretty much ready to go lay my weary body down next to the grave of the hill’s namesake, an early farmer in the area who died at age 88 in 1854, perhaps from one too many runs up the hill. The small cemetery where he resides is a scant quarter-mile to the north. It’s on private property just beside the road, over a drystone wall behind the large base of a moldering monument inscribed S. BRADY JR next to land once occupied by a small Methodist Episcopal chapel.
The old church was razed 111 years ago, so any prayer of thanks I offer up for surviving another workout has to be done on the go, as I head home to rest and check my latest position on the Strava leaderboard.
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