Progress & Patience

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

It’s a Saturday morning, and as I do most Saturday mornings, I’m up hours before sunrise. All my running gear is packed and ready to go, so all I have to do is get dressed, brush my teeth, and pour a cup of coffee for the car ride. I’m going to a mountain where I do a *lot* of my training. Mount Wilson sits on the outskirts of Los Angeles and peaks at around 5,700 feet. It’s 7 miles to the summit and I’ll gain about 5,000 feet of elevation on the way. The trail starts and ends in Sierra Madre, a quiet suburban city in Los Angeles county best known for it’s proximity to the mountains. Nearly 20 percent of residents are over 65 and a single family home will cost you over a million dollars.

I’ve been running up Mount Wilson a long time, back before Chantry Flats was closed due to wildfires. Like many who live in Sierra Madre or frequent the nearby foothills, I’ve seen plenty of bears, all of them unconcerned with my presence. I’ve run up Mount Wilson in snow, in rain, in boiling hot sun, with friends and alone. Because Mount Wilson isn’t very tall, it’s accessible year-round, and in the winter, there can be a foot of snow on the summit one weekend that disappears by the next. Once, I was followed by a strange man as I ran down the road from the summit to another set of trails. And another time, I called for help when a different man fell…