I got home earlier today, and I will be spending the next three or four days in Harlan before I settle into my West Des Moines apartment for good. While here, I'm going to check out the Anytime Fitness in town and see what it has to offer, and I will also be doing some farmhand work this weekend in the form of helping put up grain bins with my father. Probably won't be as relaxing as it could be, but at least I'll avoid being lethargic at home.
Tonight, I ran 2.01 miles on my dirt and gravel road (1800 St. between "New" and "Old" Highway 59s in Shelby County). This two mile out-and-back has always been one of the toughest runs for me. There's the N. Dubuque St. Hill in Iowa City, and then there's the Too-Unknown-To-Be-Named Hill out here in on 1800 St. We'll just call it The Hill and be done with it. It's a typical country road. It's consistently hilly. It's unpaved. It's barren, except for the multitude of bugs trying to sit in your ear or bite your legs, arms, and the back of your neck. If I were to invite anybody to run with me for a week, and each day I presented them with a run that has challenged me, then this would be the first day's activity. It's only two miles, and that's the manageable part. Anymore and you'd be begging for mercy.
The run starts off near my house (it's the one immediately above the starting point and to the left of Highway 59--if you're using the satellite view, not the street view). This part of the run is gravel, and it's a slow and moderate incline. Running on gravel is not fun. It's somewhere between sidewalk and sand, with sidewalk being easiest and sand being hardest. You have much less traction than on a paved surface, which makes it difficult to carry your momentum forward. Losing any momentum makes each step that much harder. After this short stretch, the road turns to dirt. Here's the easiest part of the run, assuming that it hasn't just rained in the past few days, in which case you'd be running through mud instead and have no traction once so ever. It's also too bad that the mud has been molded numerous times by trucks and trailers and tractors to create Mini Grand Canyons in the road. Don't sprain your ankle. This part is downhill for a while. A good confidence boost. Then comes The Hill. Just as The Hill starts, the road turns back to gravel. It's the perfect way to kill the confidence boost. The Hill lasts about a quarter mile on a steep grade. The only good part is the part when you reach the top, panting and sweating, and realize that there's some fictitious (yet entirely true) law of science that says what goes up must come down. You coast down the hill and reach the out-and-back point, Linden Rd. (or known as Old Highway 59 if you live around here). Then you get to see The Hill from her other angle, going back up her and thinking--no, repeating--to yourself that your life has no meaning, that everything sucks, that you should just stop because there's no point anymore.
But then you keep going, tackle The Hill a second time, and also have a face-to-face confrontational with the other angle of that long downhill slope you enjoyed at the beginning of your run. Get over her, and you're pretty much home.
It'll come off as dramatic, but trust when I say that this blog post didn't come close to doing this run justice. If this run were an Aretha Franklin song, I'd have a tough time picking between "Respect" and "Chain of Fools."
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