Observations placeholder
Running in the Adirondacks
Identifier
003045
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The following experience is from a runner’s forum, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt and saying its bliss and not just an endorphin rush – it may be both
The Adirondacks do not form a connected range such as the Rocky Mountains of the Western United States. They are instead an eroded dome consisting of many peaks, either isolated or in groups, often with little apparent order. There are over one hundred summits, ranging from under 1,200 feet (366 m) to over 5,000 feet (1,524 m) in elevation; the highest peak, Mount Marcy, at 5,344 feet (1,629 m), is near the eastern part of the group. Only two mountains, Mount Marcy and Algonquin are over 5000 feet. Thus they are not very high and the conclusions of the person below are probably not correct
A description of the experience
Before I got a cigarette habit I ran for more than a decade, and in the Adirondacks, after nearly killing myself for 2 kilometers up a steep path I'd take a gradual 8K downhill route home. After the uphill gallup I'd be panting like a great fucking dane and when I'd get home and shower, the subsequent 4-5 hour feeling of somatic--uh--beatitude, is the closest thing to IV heroin I've felt: better I think than 160 mg oxycodone. The combination of thinner air and extreme demand for oxygen was the key maybe: it doesn't happen on flat roads at sea level. So then yeah, if anyone runs long distances up mountains and has felt the subsequent heroin-like dolce far niente, just nod or something: I wanna know if it's worth my while to to try to reproduce the conditions and test the notion (it's kind of hard to do when the steepest thing around me is a landfill).