My First Run to the Peak

20 years ago around halfway through my freshman year at San Ramon Valley High School I joined my cross-country teammates for a run up Mt. Diablo from our school campus. The run would take 14 miles and climb over 3000ft. This was the longest run of my life regardless of the climbing.

We took on this challenge in the off-season between cross-country and track. I have no idea how much time it took to get to the top. I’m not sure if any of us had a watch on. That didn’t matter, all that mattered was reaching the top where one of my teammates parents was waiting for us with a van to bring us back down.

I was thrilled to join the older runners on my team in this pursuit. They were bigger, stronger, and faster than me. They had big goals for the upcoming track season and for life after high school. I soaked in everything. None of these runners competed in college, let alone as pro runners, but they took running seriously and modeled discipline for a young impressionable me.

I wouldn’t call this a training run. There were countless different runs or workouts that we could have done that would have been better to prepare us for our upcoming season flat mile and two mile races. This was an adventure run. We did it because we could, not as a means for something else.

20 years later, I find the ability to pick a place to go or a route to be explored and to set out and do it to be one of the greatest rewards of training and competing at a high level.

Sure, I also want to test my limits and see where I stack up among my competitors, but that isn’t complete in driving me to train hard any more. I’m still in a never ending quest for peak fitness and races are still a part of it, but so are the mountains outside my front door that are always due for some exploring.