It occurred to me as we drove up the mountain to our timeshare hotel last Saturday that this might be a difficult place to run. Heck, it was a difficult place to drive! At night, I could barely see the narrow, hairpin turns. If I missed a turn by a foot, we might find our car tumbling down the side of the mountain. We were staying in the Smoky mountains in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a place we knew little about, but thought might be a fun adventure for a family vacation.
More on that later. First, as you might imagine, one of my immediate concerns was running. It seems we always find a place to run no matter where we are staying. This, however, was going to be a challenge. We could either drive 20 minutes down the mountain every morning for the chance to run on flat ground. That, however, would take a lot of time away from our kids. And my wife and I would have to make separate trips while one of us stayed behind to watch them. Needless to say that was a bad option.
The other option was to simply put my head down, and run the mountain. How bad could it be?
Well, that was the choice. I enjoy running hills. It is a good way to build strength and speed as well as get your heart rate up pretty quickly. That's why my friends and I go to Barrington for long runs many weekends. The rolling hills there are great.
But they are nothing like the side of the mountain where we were staying. The Smoky mountains offer the highest elevation in the United States east of the Mississippi river. The first day I started out the door, and headed down the road, downhill. I had gone a mile or so when I realized I'd better find a way to mix it up or I was gonna be struggling up the same roads on the way back for several miles. There was no way to avoid running either up or down on these roads, but at least I hoped to avoid really long stretches of one or the other.
So I took a chance and turned on a road that seemed to be going in another direction, and fortunately, it wound back on a loop nearby our hotel. And it included both steep climbs and descents every few hundred yards. So I got really good workouts in, just not killer, virtually impossible ones. The pictures show the roads near the hotel. I'm not sure, however, they illustrate just how steep these hills are.
To give you an idea, we were staying across the mountain from a ski resort. We could look across and see the base near the parking lot and the bottom of the lifts. By the time I reached the top of some of my runs, I looked across and say the top of the ski runs, where the lifts drop off the skiers. So I was basically running the uphill equivalent of the ski runs.
The thought occurred to me as I was running that this was really good training for running, especially when you consider the thin air from running at altitude. But it was also great preparation for several upcoming stair climbs I am doing. The AON building climb benefitting Children's Memorial Hospital is coming up on January 31st as a matter of fact. So I have no excuse for not trying to get a fast time in that!
Running like this, of course, is why some of the mountain areas in the west are so popular with elite athletes for training. Albuquerque, Boulder, and Mammoth Lakes are some of the cities that come to mind where you will find the best runners in the world training these days.
As for the vacation, it went well. After our morning runs, my wife and I enjoyed taking our daughters on some of Gatlinburg's other adventures. We tried skiing, swimming, and my two oldest daughters even kept me up on ice skates for a time!
Perhaps the nicest thing about Gatlinburg was the weather. It was in the 50's much of time, and a welcome departure from the cold and snow in Chicago. The only snow we saw in Gatlinburg was the man-made kind they used for the ski runs.
Now, however, it's back to reality. A couple more months of dressing in layers for cold, snow, and wind.
See you on the roads....
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