16 miles in Percy Warner Park- A Runners diary

....its not a run, its a right of passage....

that's how everyone in Nashville views the Percy Warner Park 11.2 mile loop.

Let me make a feeble attempt to paint a picture for you. The loop has a net elevation gain of about 1300 ft. Two massive hills, the 9-mile-hill and the 3-mile-hill cover half of it. Both the hills have an insanely steep climb of approximately 250ft spread over a mile(or slightly under). The remaining 900ft elevation change is spread over constantly undulating mini-hills. Throughout the entire run one is constantly running either uphill or downhill, you have a better chance of finding life on mars than finding a meaningful flat section.

To get the extra distance you go outside the park and run through an absolutely flat and gorgeous golf course. This gets you the extra 3/5 miles depending on if you are running the 16 miler or 18 miler. Running a 8:15/8:30 pace on this flat 3/3.5 mile section feels like a walk in the park. Well to be fair the golf course, like any other suburban golf course, is strictly OK. But its all the endorphins and adrenaline pumping in you veins, that transport you into the realm of Lothlórien.

Most runners don't run Percy Warner, they endure it. Our trainer wisely places this run towards the flag end. You are either running to test how strong you have become since the last time you ran it. Or to test if you are fit enough to run the full marathon. Very few worry about the pace. The idea is to run at a slightly uncomfortable pace and then in the end compare your times with previous runs.

Like the rain in Forest Gump, here too there are different kind of runners.

There are the crazy ones - Who simply blast the uphills like it is '2-mins-to-Apocalypse' and Noah is waiting with a stop watch on the top of that hill; summoning the last call. For them its a slap if the face if slopes slow you down. They live in a pre-Newtonian era, where the concept of gravity has not yet been discovered. If you stick with the fastest group till the base of first hill, you can witness these mad-men flying up the steep slopes. It is both awe-inspiring and highly emasculating.

There there are smart ones - For whom the climb is simply too long and simply too steep. Hence they simply walk up the hill. For them the run is like a game of chess. They gauge their opponent for weaknesses, walking the steepest section, running the moderate ones and prodding along anything in between.

Then there are runners like me - who are speed demons on flats and think of the hills as a necessary inconvenience to go from one side of the park to the other. For us it is simply a battle of wills between you and the mountain. Its a all or nothing battle where there is only one victor. If you are able to make it to the top without stopping or walking then you've won else the mountain gets to keep the scalp. Your ego being the scalp. If you win, your victory gift then is a long winding downhill, which you can fly down feeling the cool breeze caress your face, drying out the sweat and leaving behind battle scars. And by battle scars I mean the white salt residue which unfortunately you can't keep intact for show-and-tell :)

PS: I will chronicle my run in a later blog post.