Yesterday I ran some of the short hill sprints that my friend Skip suggested to me a few weeks ago when I was complaining about "dead legs." I have been suspicious in the past of "mixing" my workouts, like hills and intervals in one day, but as Skip said these sprints are so short - only a few seconds each - that injury is unlikely. I have worked up to eight of them now, and I can see that I could easily complete a dozen or more on an otherwise easy day. Running hills at any pace builds strength, so I feel that I am making some strides (as it were).
Today I ran a second hill workout because I wanted to complete another long run in the middle of the week, and then taper off on Friday. So I ran all the way down to the Mirror Lake Bridge via Cullasaja Drive, a run I used to do regularly but have not yet completed this year. It's a long, shady route, and I realized that I have been missing it and should incorporate it more into my schedule. And it went well; I was able to pull up that long hill without stop for a total of seven miles.
All of this hill running reminds me of the Myth of Sisyphus, that iconic figure in Greek mythology who was condemned to push a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again. Hill running seems like that sometimes - run uphill, walk back down, run uphill, walk back down. James Ramey (Town meter-reader) drove past me while I was running those sprints yesterday and I had a glimpse of what I took to be a head-shake of disapproval. What's Richard up to now?
Albert Camus wrote a famous essay on this subject and concluded, "The struggle itself . . . is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
These are words that I remembered today as I drove home in a carbohydrate-deprived, dehydrated daze, happy to have accomplished nothing more than temporary cessation of struggle.
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