Viewpoint: A challenging view from the *%)@! hills
The guy with the T-shirt slugged his way up Brady Street hill.
The guy was not small. His
T-shirt clearly noted that.
It said something like this: “I am a (insert reference to size here that can’t be published in a family newspaper). But my (insert previously mentioned reference again) is in the race.”
It made me chuckle while climbing The Hill.
You see, I use capital letters because that hill that gets all of the attention. Brady Street. Brady Street. Brady Street.
What about what I think is quite possibly the worst, cruelest, nastiest hill in America? The hill that ends at the corner of Kirkwood and Bridge.
I’ll call it KAB Hill.
KAB Hill is a sneaky little (OK, not so little) hill. Last year, it nearly killed me. I admit, I have not done one Bix at Six training run. So during my first Bix last year, I stumbled up the thing in complete disbelief, wondering why no one had warned me about the hills.
KAB awaits runners after a series of tortuous climbs. I could almost hear it snickering.
The hills are what I will call the dirty little secret of the Bix. No one ever fully discusses them. Sure, there is a brief mention of them, but The Hill gets all of the attention, all of the glory. When the public thinks Bix, the vision of thousands of bodies bouncing up The Hill invariably comes to mind. Runners don’t look bad on their way up The Hill. We still are rather photogenic. We’re actually kind of smiling.
Down Kirkwood we go. We don’t notice KAB heading east, because it’s downhill. We actually kind of like KAB then because it is, well, downhill.
But then the uphills start.
I can’t even tell you how many hills there are on Bix. I stopped counting. I recall one really long slow hill. I remember a really fast downhill. And I remember KAB.
It’s hidden behind a bend in the road. And by the time you arrive at the foot of KAB, the race is just a hair shy of being five-sevenths of the way done.
At this point, I was wishing a small glacier could come and wipe it out. Not the nice people cheering for us on the hill, or their houses, just the hill, please. Then I felt bad because a glacier in Iowa now would mean global warming was seriously out of control.
So, I guess we’ll just take the hills. I’ve hated the Bix for a long time. For years, I hated it because it means Quad-City Times employees essentially have to wear hiking boots on Friday to make it over some intriguing terrain because our parking lot shuts down to set up for the post-run party. I hated it because it means at least one Bix-related story assignment. I think I hated it, too, because I thought I could never do it.
Fifty pounds lighter and much better health habits later, I still hate the Bix. But now I hate it because of the hills. Saturday was my second Bix 7. I beat my time from last year by 47 seconds: 1:24:28.
Yes, I’m slow. I will never win the thing. But, as the guy with the T-shirt on The Hill, said: At least I’m in the race.
Ann McGlynn is the cops and courts reporter for the Quad-City Times.