Three Mile Hill

One staple of my weekly running is supposed to be a three-mile hill. I've been cogitating on which 3-mile hill I should be running. There are lots of hills west of Boulder but, of course, I wanted the perfect 3-mile hill: able to run to it, usable throughout any season, easy on the legs on the run back down, light or no traffic, etc. etc. etc. Today I experimented with the NCAR hill. (Those of you who have seen Sleeper, have seen the NCAR hill.) I figured the run from my house to the top of NCAR would pry be about 3 miles. All in all, it worked out quite nicely.

Going west from my house, through our neighborhood and through the NIST property was slightly uphill and about two miles. Out the back of NIST and up to the base of the NCAR hill (via bike path, neighborhood streets and trail) brought the run to 30 minutes. Up NCAR hill (2000 meters - a painted stripe marked each 25 meters and with numbers painted each 100 meters) brought the run to 44 minutes. I figure I got in at least 3 miles of hill during that 44 minutes so I treated myself by running west out the back of NCAR's property (the view in the pic) and onto the Mesa trail heading south then back around onto the trail on the east-facing base of the NCAR hill...a nice circular trail run around NCAR dodging the occasional pile of bear scat, listening to birds and the wind. Upon completing the circle, I trotted on home for a total of a delightful 103 minutes of running.

Tonight is Boot Camp. It'll be quite 'interesting' if it's glutes and quads night...