Current mood:

satisfied

The Hill
I’ve discovered and re-defined “The Hill”.

Riding my bike to work has been good exercise. I went from being sedentary to riding 10 minutes with only a relatively minor elevation change. At first I couldn’t even pedal the whole way, I spent a lot of time coasting, but now I’m pushing hard the entire way. Time to get my clip on shoes and a stopwatch to keep in touch with my limit.

While staring out the window around noon today, wondering if I should just work through the lunch hour again (Mon, Wed, Fri are my “holy days” where I eat ~500 calories in healthy snacks for the day so don’t go out for lunch), the blue sky and sun enticed me out for a walk.

UC Santa Cruz sits on a hill giving fantastic views of the Monterey bay and Santa Cruz. I work at the bottom of that hill, at a former SCO building below the Pogonip area. I’d done some hiking through Pogonip during college, but never all the way down, so I went looking for a way up. First I went straight up from the street and found some awesome views of the city, but no paths. After coming down and skirting behind some buildings, I saw a guy in running attire all sweaty and jogging back towards the street, a tip off that there’s a trail.

About 15 minutes up that trail, it comes out of the trees into an open field with no shade, so I decided to stop there. It was pretty steep to that point, with uneven terrain. As I was walking up, I was planning my progression from struggling up it to running full speed to the top. I’ll get to know that little trail very well. After looking on the internet, I see there are miles of trails all throughout Pogonip. So maybe I’ll expand the range of my 1 hour lunchtime bubble, like run as far as I can in 20 minutes then walk back. But I know I’m not ready to run yet, I’ll put in my time walking and speed up slowly. As I drop weight it’ll become easier as well, right now it’s like I’m hiking up hill with a 60 lb. monkey on my belly.

When I was commuting from Santa Cruz to Milpitas daily, “The Hill” meant clogged highway 17 going over the Santa Cruz mountains. Now it’s a place for me to explore the limits of my heart and lungs in a peaceful, beautiful setting. Quite an improvement!