Sparrow Road circa 1980, Minnetonka, MN

I took a run down memory lane this week. It's was a wet nasty day. I wanted a good hard work and was determined to do something. My legs were still stiff from running 2 humps over Mission Peak. I was almost home and I had to figure something out quick!

Back in the days of high school, our coach would have us run hills on Sparrow Road in Minnetonka. I have not been back to Sparrow road for years. However, the memory of running this horrible hill is burned into my brain forever. Coach Lane, Schmidty, and Hovland would line the team up according to our event. I was a half miler or better known as distance runner. We would have to run this monster 20 times. We had pukers every time we ran this bad boy. Never the distance runners.

Back to reality. It's 2009, not 1980, and I don't run 20 hills. I laced up my shoes and ran the 1.5 miles to Morrison Canyon and ran 4 x 1/4 mile up a monster hill. Each repeat took nearly 3 minutes to complete. My total run was nearly an hour and I was satisfied and tired.

Tomorrow it's the hang glider launch run which traverses 15 miles through the east bay hills.