Earlier this week I climbed the Incline! See my photos on the photo section of my workoutlog.com site.
I first heard of the Incline only a month or two ago, when I noticed Chris Carmichael – Lance Armstrong’s personal coach – make reference to it on his Twitter site. At the time, I had no idea what he was talking about.
Then, when I made plans to visit my friends Jana and Delvin in Colorado Springs, Jana asked me if I wanted to do the Incline while I was in town. Still not knowing what the Incline was, I did a Google search and found this New York Times story. According to the Times, even Olympic athletes consider the Incline to be a formidable challenge, and doing it has become a rite of passage for many who live in the area and also for those, such as myself, who call themselves endurance athletes and come to visit.
I made the mistake of telling Joe Miller, a reporter at The News & Observer, that I was thinking of taking a shot at the Incline. “You absolutely have to do it,” Joe told me. “And you have to take pictures, and write a report about it when you get back home.”
That did it – I was hooked. I was sold on the idea. I was committed (or so I should be, some folks said behind my back). I’m a former newspaper reporter myself, so the idea that I had a “writing assignment” that required me to do the Incline was all I needed, the fact that I wouldn’t get paid for it notwithstanding.
I arrived in Colorado on Friday, Feb. 20, and planned to fly back home the following Wednesday. Although I live in central North Carolina, I have a little bit of experience in running at high altitudes. In 2006, I did a run that started at the Copper Mountain ski resort, as part of the Colorado Outward Bound Relay. And then last summer, I took part in the Reno-Tahoe Odyssey, another running relay race in the mountain west.
My plan was to wait until Tuesday to attempt the Incline, to give myself the maximum amount of time possible to acclimate to the altitude. The day before, Jana and I went to a parking lot near the base of the Incline, so I would know how to get there on my own. There a nice young couple who had just come back down from the Incline advised me where to park and told me that nobody they knew was able to run the whole thing. You might be able to run at the bottom, they told me, but you’ll have to walk most of it.
The following morning, I showed up there shortly after 8 a.m. I followed the trail that led from the parking lot to a point about 70 yards or so up the hill from the bottom of the Incline. On my way down to bottom, I passed a very fit-looking woman, wearing knee high socks, headed up the Incline.
When I got to the bottom, I took a few pictures looking up as three people started up the Incline ahead of me. Then, when I felt good and ready, I started walking up myself. After 20 or 30 yards of walking, I decided to give running a try. So I ran for maybe 50 yards, then switched over to walking. There would be no more running for me that day, although I did pass the three people who started ahead of me and reached the top before them.
As the grade reached its steepest pitch, I noticed that my heart rate crept up to 170 beats per minute – which is about the same as a good hard effort for me in most of the races I do. I was sweating like I would on a 90-degree day in North Carolina, although the temp was probably in the 50s at the time. I pushed down on my thighs with my hands to generate extra climbing power. And at some points I was nearly crawling, putting my hands on the rail ties in front of me – which were about waist high because of how steep the grade was.
When I was about 2/3 of the way up, the grade was much less steep, the so-called “false summit.” At this point I saw the woman in knee-high socks running down the Incline. She stopped when she got to me and we exchanged a few words. She told me she was a local resident who did the Incline two or three times a week. I told her I was doing it for the very first time, and she was nice enough to say that I was doing a good job of it (whether it was true or not!).
When I reached the top, after what my stopwatch said was 41 minutes of climbing, I rested for a bit until the next group behind me finished. Then I recruited one of them, a guy named Mario, to take my picture. I then walked with Mario, his brother and his dog one half-mile further beyond the Incline, at which point I decided to turn around and head back down the Incline instead of taking the easier way down, via the Barr trail.
Getting back to the bottom took me just as long, and maybe even longer, than the climb up. On my way down, I passed a guy who told me he was climbing it for the second time that day. Apparently there are locals who do that, but for me climbing it just once in a day was accomplishment enough!
It’s hard to describe how I felt after I finished, but everyone who takes part in endurance sports knows the feeling. For the rest of the day I felt highly elated. Then the following day, my legs started feeling sore, much like they would feel after I had run a half marathon. And even two days later, my legs were still feeling a little sore.
But that’s what we endurance sports geeks think of as “good pain.” The kind of pain that makes us feel proud of what we did to bring it on. And already I’ve started thinking about going back to do the Incline a second time.
After all, I now have an established PR (personal record) on that course. Gotta go back and see if I can beat that time! ;-)
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