I have certainly mentioned the mountain in my area before. I mean, it’s not really a mountain, but try walking up it. Definitely feels like a mountain.
On the Pittston side it is a fairly straight up .96 mile to the top, where the other side coming up through Dresden is a leisurely 3 miles of flats, steep inclines and grades to the summit.
Running either side is excellent training. I haven’t been using the steeper, shorter side this year so far. I ran it once last week for the first time. Wasn’t quite as horrible as I remembered.
The first half mile is three slopes in the first 4/10s of the mile, then levels off for a tenth until you start going up for the second half. The first slope is the kicker, it’s the longest and dang, it is steeeeeep. Gets easier after that (it helps if you keep telling yourself that).
My road comes out at the halfway point, so I run up the second half all the time to run over and down the other side towards Dresden. That part of the run was simple.
Because I am goal oriented, now that I had run up the mountain once, I needed to do it twice — in a row. And that’s what I did this morning 🙂
It was a lovely 5 mile run in total, with the half mile to the hill, down the hill and up (and up) and home. Oddly, my last mile was the fastest (probably just glad I was almost done!). And my second time up the hill was a bit faster than the first. Go figure.
So three times next time?
runnerwithablog 