Watching everyone arrive at the top of the Up and Over climb on Thursday made me feel so happy. This run has a lot of meaning for me. After I started coaching Monta Vista track in 2011, Up and Over was the first run I did in Fremont Older; our assistant coach and MVXC alumni Matt Paquet said, “you are going to like this,” and on a cool February afternoon I climbed up Prospect Road for the first time. I loved this run, I remember that first day, and this was the start of a journey for me as well as hundreds of Monta Vista runners who followed.
Coach Joe Vigil and USATF Level 3
I spent the 2014 New Year’s holiday at the USA Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, earning my USATF Level 3 and completing my IAAF Level 5 certifications. Joe Vigil, one of the distance running coaching legends, was one of the instructors. Coach Vigil talked about a specific run that he believed was one of most valuable routes he had for his athletes. Outside Alamosa, Colorado, he had found a road that climbed at a consistent 4 to 5% grade for 10 km, and he would have his athletes run this hill as a continuous run, feeling that this was an excellent way to develop the athletes’ lactic threshold*. I was so intrigued, I went back to my hotel room that night and started out mapping out routes near Monta Vista that could replicate Coach Vigil’s hill. The next morning, I went back to Coach and we looked at a few options. He agreed that for high school kids, beginning with shorter distances made sense. We landed on the Up and Over climb as an option, with a graduation to Up and Over + Garrods when an athlete was ready for more**. These climbs have been a staple of the MVXC training program ever since.
Up and Over (Climb Only)
Up and Over + Garrods (Climb Only) (Your Next Challenge!)
The Pandemic Lockdown and Fastest Known Times
The COVID pandemic and the lockdown saved lives but it was a sad time. MVXC did what we could to help; pro athletes came and talked to the team on Zoom, we had Zoom group aerobic classes, we had cooking lessons on Zoom, we grew to really, really hate Zoom. And for a long time, we could not even run together.
One of our guests was Ryan Sterner, and he talked about FKTs, or Fastest Known Times (IYKYK). So MV set up and started running Up and Over as an FKT challenge. It was one of the challenges we had to get us through that isolated time, both as a personal challenge, and for connection with others. Personally, I think it is useful (and fun) to track our times on known courses like this; I had a bunch of hills that I would run regularly and track my times. The point was not to set a PR every time, the point was to have a little accountability, and also to be able to finish a climb or a segment and think “13:30, not bad,” and roll on. Sharing our FKT pursuits gave us goals for our training and a reason to get connected even while isolated.
The FKT challenge was one of the few happy memories from the lockdown.
One of My Last Runs with MVXC
Coming out of the lockdown, my back had really started to do me wrong. My running was getting pretty inconsistent, but there were still some great memories. Megan Nieh was one of the athletes in the class of 2024, and was one of the last MVXC athletes I was able to run with. The first couple times Megan climbed Up and Over, I was out with her and guided. We walked a few times the first climb, and a few less times the second time up that hill. The third time Megan was with some teammates, and she came and found me back at Monta Vista to tell me she had done the climb nonstop. We were both proud of what she did!
Being able to climb Up and Over nonstop is a goal we can all achieve. That doesn’t mean it is easy; it just means that it is achievable physically for almost everyone who has the drive and discipline and motivation to do the work—it is achievable if you have some grit. Climbing up and over nonstop is a goal and a signpost on the way to something else—to climbing to Garrods, or a new PR at Crystal or Lagoon Valley, or making the varsity team. But just because you have further goal, that doesn’t mean that you should discount the intermediate goals like climbing Up and Over. There are a thousand kids at Monta Vista who have never done the run that you just did, and would be terrified if we told them to try. So, take the win!
September 4, 2025
And that gets us to yesterday! If you read this far, I want you to know how proud I was of our team today. And I hope you are proud of each other. Everyone ran great, from Kento, Constantine, and Ethan who touched the sign and kept on going nonstop to Garrod’s Gate to the last person who made it all the way. You were fab. I liked the way you hung around to high five and cheer the people after you. So many smiles. It was great to see the joy on so many faces. Don’t take this for granted; most people in America would not want to walk that much, and you all ran it and then ran back to school!
You are cool people, and together you are a great team. I’m so happy to be your coach! Keep it up, the best is yet to come.
*”Why?” asks Ethan. I think this is partially just physics—moving a mass up an incline takes more energy than moving a mass at the same elevation, right? Alberto Salazar found that on a treadmill, running at a 3 degree incline would increase his heartrate by the same amount as moving from a treadmill to a flat run outside—so 3% compensated for the wind resistance. In any case, it seems to make sense that climbing is going to cause an increased workload and therefore produce more lactic acid that our bodies must clear, and there is a lot of evidence to support that, including the advice I got from Coach Vigil. He did some blood testing to augment his intuition, so even if this is not a published scientific result, it is science-informed and makes sense to me.
**I remember this discussion clearly! I had cornered Coach Vigil at breakfast, and opened up my laptop and we started going through different hill options I found the night before. Pretty soon a bunch of college coaches came over to see what we were talking about; I was the only high school coach at this class, and the college and pro coaches had mostly ignored me to this point, but now they saw me huddled with Coach Vigil and they wanted to see what we were so excited about. I remember the University of Kansas Jayhawks coach being completely deflated; “There aren’t any hills like that within 500 miles of Lawrence!”