I grew up in Bend, Oregon, where the stark high desert meets the piney mountains. It’s got a little bit of altitude at about 4,000 feet of elevation, so the air is a little thinner.
Less oxygen means running is just a little bit harder. We also had lots of hills in Bend.
I was a long-distance runner. So I ran up lots of hills. Then I ran down the hills. Then back up other hills and back down again and sometimes it felt like I was going either up or down.
A really big hill is Pilot Butte, just two blocks from the house I grew up in. It had a paved road that wound around the butte to the top, rising about 500 feet in a mile.
I ran Pilot Butte so much I can still picture it clearly. Especially that last little curve where it got really steep.
I raced cross country for my school, the Bend High Lava Bears. At Bend High, I figured out that those boys from the Willamette Valley, especially the track runners who ran cross country in the fall, didn’t like hills.
So the hills became my calling card in races because I didn’t have the speed to keep up with them on the flats.
Runners generally don’t like hills for obvious reasons. But I embraced them. Attacked them.
I figured I would do the thing that my competitors didn’t want to do.
It paid off. I built strength running those hills. I could take the other runners on the hills and because of all that strength from running on so many hills at altitude I could keep up with them on the flats.
And then I had an epiphany. The place to really separate from the pack wasn’t running up the hill.
It was at the top of the hill when everyone was gassed. Where they least expected someone to really push the pace. Things got even better for me in the races.
Then when I got to the University of Portland, one of my cross country teammates taught how to run down the hill. Yes, there’s an art to it. He was a master at it and taught me well.
So the place on the race course that everyone hated and even feared, became my favorite section. I loved those courses with hills.
Our conference cross country meet was in San Mateo, California. We raced in the steep hills at Crystal Springs and you either were going up or down. I loved it and had a lot of success there.
Running those hills is something I think about often when it comes to work. When things are tough, when I come to those hills, what do I do?
What do you do?
Do you embrace those challenges? Attack them?
Or watch someone else go by you?