Slaying the Beast

Baldwin Street, NZ

No... this ain't no St. George & the Dragon post. Nor the 666 Beast.

Nope... this is something quite concrete and physical... a hill.

Not just any hill, a 26% gradient hill (a 2.6 metre gain in height (rise) over a 10 metre horitzontal distance (run)). Which might not sound bad except consider this... most regular highway hills are 6%. Anything over that gets a warning sign saying "steep hill". And the steepest paved road in the world is Baldwin Street in New Zealand with a gradient of 35%. The steepest driveable hill in San Francisco is 31.52%. Sooo... our little 26% hill is up there.

Runners use it to train on... although the "running" ceases about mid-way up the hill and it becomes more of a walk. Our 12 year old nephew figured he could run up it... nope... We have cyclists who try to bike up it and they too end up dismounting and walking. People will drive their vehicles up the hill to give their engines a work-out... our vehicle can only do it in second gear (yes we have a manual transmission). Suffice to say... it ain't for the faint of heart.

I have an on-again/off-again relationship with this hill. If I don't walk it for a few weeks... I find that it eats me up. I will need to stop once, maybe twice, while hoofing it up... just a bit of a break to catch my breath. I'm proud of myself if I can do it in under 10 minutes. My heart rate is up in the 140s and 150s after climbing his hill...

But... once I've hiked it daily for a couple of weeks... I reach the milestone of being able to complete the hill without a break. Yay! And... I timed myself a few days ago... 7:05 minutes. Not bad, not bad at all. Don't get me wrong, it's still a beast of a hill. Slack off for a day or two and... it's like losing a week of gains. This hill requires a commitment.

I had a friend out from Winnipeg (flat land) who wheezed up the hill with me a few summers ago. The hill looks so innocuous from the bottom and when she sent pictures to her boyfriend, he was like "What's the big deal?". She texted back "You have no idea!" Looks can be deceiving.

Eshima Ohashi bridge - Japan
(with a telephoto lens)

See this picture? Freaky, no? It's a bridge in Japan and it looks seriously steep, doesn't it? But... as they say, looks can be deceiving... It's the Eshima Ohashi bridge and it has a gradient of 6.1% on one side and 5.1% on the other side. That's it... From the side, it looks quite normal. The crazy steep-looking pictures are thanks to photographers using telephoto lenses...

Anyhow... our hill is kind of the reverse... it looks not too bad but... it sucks you in, this hill, and yet... 26% is only 19°.  Which doesn't seem very steep at all. When I worked in forestry, we'd regularly climb 100% (45°) slopes. Sometimes 130%. Anything beyond that and it gets seriously dicey. Back then, I would have considered a 26% slope to be on the low end... as compared to 100% where I'm scrambling up holding onto bushes and shrubs. It's all relative I guess.

But, the thing I've noticed is... if I can slay the beast first thing in the morning, the rest of the day seems to fall into place. In climbing the hill in the mornings, I have, in many ways, gotten the hardest thing out of the way. After beast hill everything else looks small in comparison.

It kind of reminds me of the productivity hack to eat the frog. Not a literal frog, mind you. This is a trick to tackle the item on your to-do list that you shun/avoid/procrastinate.

Maybe it's the biggest or the hardest or the one with the most uncertainty attached to it. It's the thing I don't want to do but that I need to do. If  I can do that one thing first... eat that frog first... well, after that, everything else looks easy.

Oh... and Mark Twain also said... if it's your job to eat two frogs every morning... it's best to start with the biggest one first! Charming.

I need to keep reminding myself of that every day. What is my frog for the day? Other than the hill. Usually it's to get some writing done. And, if I can get some good solid writing done first thing in the morning, well then, the rest of the day falls into place... but if I don't... it seems like everything goes sideways. Which is why I like to have slayed the beast hill first thing in the morning (the biggest frog)... I've at least eaten one frog, and that is certainly better than eating no frogs!