This weekend I wanted to run somewhere new and adventurous so I would have a great spot to blog about. But alas, sometimes life gets in the way. I didn’t have time to drive far so I decided to tackle Ridgeline Drive. It’s worthy of a blog post in itself—besides being a challenging hill workout, it’s also a pretty run.
I drive Ridgeline all the time and I always see bikers and runners slowly making their way to the top. I had run Ridgeline once but it had been a while. Ever since, the runners send me subliminal messages saying, “If we can do this, you can too. Stop avoiding this hill!”
So on Saturday I stopped avoiding and ran the damn hill. I was surprised how good I felt. On the way down, I ran next to a green hillside dotted with cactus and orange wildflowers. On the way up, I had scenic views of the golf course and Quail Hill Preserve. But I didn’t spend much time admiring the views because I was too focused on looking in front of me to make it up the hill.
Even though Ridgeline is a city street, it feels like a trail because there’s dirt on both sides that you can run on. You just need to tune out the cars whizzing by.
Ridgeline is 1.4 miles from University Drive to Turtle Rock Drive for about 3 miles roundtrip (map here). It has an ascent of about 250 feet, according to my Runkeeper app, which makes it an effective short and steep run (hence, all those runners I always see). I added a little more to make the run 3.75 miles. You could continue on Ridgeline past Turtle Rock for an extra calorie burn but I’ll save that for another blog post!



