When I was a kid, during my family’s summer vacations to Bend, I regularly walked up Pilot Butte with my Aunt and Dad in the morning. Consequently, having the opportunity to run to the top of Pilot Butte was one of the things I was most looking forward to on my trip to Oregon. The Butte sits on the east side of town and as a kid one of the things that truly amazed me was that people actually ran up it; that is, fifteen to twenty years ago I could not imagine running such a monstrous hill. However, this morning it was my turn to run Pilot Butte.
I woke up at 5:30 am to get started by jogging from Cumberland, through Juniper Park, up Greenwood Avenue to the base of Pilot Butte for a distance of 2.9 miles. Then I proceeded with running five intervals up-and-down the Butte for a total distance of 11.30 miles. The distance from the front gate up to the top of the Butte measured exactly 1.13 on all five of my ascents with an approximate elevation gain of 450 feet (i.e., 3700 to 4150). I was able to pace myself pretty good running up the Butte; that is, my first climb was in a time of 11:54 and from there I just focused on increases the pace for each subsequent trip up. On my last interval, I went all out and reached the top of the Butte in a time of 9:31. Overall, I ran 11.30 miles on the Butte in a time of 1:36:48.
Not to go un-noted, the panorama view of the Cascades from the top of Pilot Butte is absolute amazing. Look out to the west, you can see from south to north, Mt. Bachelor, Broken Top, the Three Sisters (i.e., South, Middle, and North), Mt. Washington, 3 Fingered Jack, Mt. Jefferson, and Mt. Hood (in regards to the latter, I plan on visiting this one again on my way to Portland this Saturday).
After accomplishing my Pilot Butte objective, I jogged to the east side of town to have breakfast with my Aunt, Uncle, and Dad before running back to Cumberland then over to ED’s grocery store to pick up some lunch. The total distance of this run was 4.9 miles at an easy pace.
Lastly, my non-running workout consisted of 7.5 miles on the bike, 200 sit-ups, 25 push-ups, and 10 metronomes. | 