[This was originally posted on February 10, 2014.]
If you grew up on the west side of Rapid City, chances are you went sledding at Chalk Rock Hill. Chalk Rock Hill borders Meadowbrook Elementary School grounds on the east, at the corner of Arrowhead Drive and West Flormann Street. Most of the year the hill is covered in the red soil and chalky rock outcroppings that presumably give the hill its name, but in winter….woo hoo! It is a glorious place to test your mettle and hurtle down a slippery slope at breakneck speed.
We lived just a block from Chalk Rock Hill, so my brother, cousin and I would regularly suit up in our winter garb and trudge through the snow pulling our sleds behind us. We had a traditional runner sled as well as a plastic roll-up sled and a Super Saucer, both of which offered no steering and the real possibility of concussion if you fell off mid slide.
After a few runs in the new snow, you could get a higher speed on the packed snow. My brother was particularly daring, and he’d venture over to where there were a few rocks so he could catch some air as he descended the hill. You could also build your own jump with a mound of snow, but going over some rock protrusions that were barely covered in snow was way more death defying. I liked to calculate which section of the slope would carry me furthest down the hill that day. We would then have contests to see who could ride their sled the longest distance away from the top of the hill.
This brings me to the yak. I won the only ribbon I’ll ever win for running due in large part to Chalk Rock Hill. In grade school we had a long-distance running competition in which you had to run the entire perimeter of the Meadowbrook Elementary school grounds. That is a large distance for a grade-school kid. I started out slow, because I had seen on the Olympics in 1976 that the winning runners ran at a steady pace throughout the race. I figured that I should pace myself in order to save energy for the end of the run. To my utter amazement, I won first place. I know for a fact that Chalk Rock Hill was responsible, and here’s why:
If you go up and down Chalk Rock Hill in the snow wearing snow boots, snow pants and a heavy coat while pulling a sled behind you, you will develop the heart and lung capacity of a yak, a cloven-hooved plant chewing animal native to the Central Asian mountainous regions. His heart and lungs are notably larger than his lower altitude cousins, because he’s used to hauling people and goods all over the Himalayas while he chews on high-altitude grasses.
Winters of climbing Chalk Rock Hill in the snow would likely lead to an elevated oxygen-carrying capacity in your blood without the need for doping. Perhaps ambitious competitors should find their own version of Chalk Rock Hill and spend a few seasons climbing the slopes while pulling sleds. In fact, The Wall Street Journal recently posted a story about why Norway dominates at the winter Olympics. It’s basically because Norwegian kids are used to suiting up in winter and heading to the Norwegian hills from an early age.
My closest brush with athletic glory came in my long distance run at Meadowbrook Elementary. If you want to bring your A-game to your own sporting endeavors, perhaps you should get a sled and some snow pants and wait for the snow to hit Chalk Rock Hill. I’m sure this principle works for adults as well as kids. Besides, kids shouldn’t have all the fun.