HATE is a strong word, we teach our children. A mask for more complex emotions that bears unpacking.

You don’t really hate candied sweet potatoes topped with raisins and marshmallows, do you? Well actually, yes, yes, I do.

Okay, then, let’s just say I have a strong and entrenched antipathy to that other H word: hills.

There are two types of people in this world: Those who love hills and those who … detest them. In today’s divided country, it can feel hard to reach across the aisle and have empathy for the other side. But I do count among some of my favorite people those who love hills. (I know! What a betrayal!)

And now let us unpack my complex emotions about the H word—it is the UP that makes me all beady-eyed. DOWN hill? Wheeeeeee!

When I lived in New Mexico for a bit (hills! and altitude!), I decided to run the St. George, Utah, marathon. It was legendarily downhill, descending nearly 2,600 feet. Looked like a good chance to break through a Milestone Time Goal I’d been chasing for 7 years.

A newly met runner friend agreed to run it, too. Sara had run cross-country in high school back East with a classic crusty coach who pushed his charges to run up hills hard. For some baffling reason, this meant she loved hills. She all but skipped up them. She had never run a marathon but in her boyfriend’s (now husband’s) extended family, there was some money on the line about breaking that Milestone Time Goal, so she was all in.

My BRF is similarly UP gifted. She actually WANTS to run the Mt. Washington Road Race, if you can believe it, in New Hampshire, which gleefully boasts going all uphill for 7.6 miles, gaining 4,650 vertical feet, with a max 22% grade. It’s impossible to get into. There’s a lottery and it sells out in minutes. What is this country coming to??

Now I do realize, though I abhor admitting it, that if I rode my bike more or did Dimity’s exercises, hills wouldn’t hurt so much.

So in September, in a fit of pandemic-induced masochism, I decided to tackle the local Big Hill, which our town calls “the Mountain,” though it rises to a height of only 823 feet. I can hear all you Western Staters FOTFL.

How hard could it be? Oh.

Once I discovered just how much the “Mountain” slowed me—3 minutes per mile! oh, wow—I decided I had to run it every week until I could break XX:00 pace. [Insert whatever per-mile-pace makes you go “oh, wow,” and not in a good way.]

The weeks went something like this: XX:49, XX:27, XX:38. Plod, plod.

Finally, 10 (!) weeks of “Mountain” running later, I broke XX:00 by a full 40 seconds! Forty seconds!

In these times, when every day can feel like a metaphoric mountain, we take our small wins wherever we can find them. I still haven’t baked a pie or replaced the broken knob on the washing machine.

In Utah, Sara broke the Milestone Marathon Time Goal by a good 4 minutes. I missed it by more than 6. Gah!

Forced at age 7 or 8 to at least TRY the candied sweet potatoes topped with raisins and marshmallows, I promptly threw up. See? That’s hate.

Once I nailed the “Mountain” time goal, I quit running it every week. And went back last Tuesday to see how hard it could be. Oh right. Back to XX:00 pace. Sigh.

HILLS? Love em or … have an extreme adverse reaction to them?