A runner in Northern Kentucky cannot get too far without coming upon a hill. Whether it’s a gentle incline rising onto a bridge, the soft undulating of streets in the urban core, the rolling slopes in our subdivisions, or the long, arduous climbs from the river basin to the suburban hills, runners find themselves traversing up and down hills.
And runners have a love-hate relationship with the ground that rises before them. Like a child, hills are demanding and challenging, and hard on the legs and the lungs. Hills may get easier over time, but they never get easy. Taking them on day after day helps strengthen muscles and increase stamina, yet the first glance at a steep hill on the morning run is always met with a soft curse and a shake of the head.
Still, we revel in them. We run repeats on steep, short hills. We slog up the long, slow climbs. We seek out these hills.
We need hills — especially if we plan to run local races, such as the recent Heart Mini Marathon or the upcoming Flying Pig. Just this past weekend, many of us traveled to Lexington to Run the Bluegrass, a grueling but beautiful half-marathon in and around Keeneland, in the not-so-gentle rolling hills of Central Kentucky.
Cincinnati is known as the city of seven hills, So, as I public service, I hereby present Seven Hills of Northern Kentucky.
Devou Park: From Third Street and Western Avenue in Covington to the top of the overlook in Devou Park. It’s 1.5 miles long with a 327-foot elevation gain, resulting in a 4.1 percent grade. The bonus to this run is the view from the top of Devou Park, overlooking the Ohio River and Cincinnati. After running this route on a weekday afternoon or evening, you look out on the traffic on Interstate 75 and are glad you’re in the park and not stuck in your car. After that, instead of retracing your steps to the start, you run through the park to Montague Road, down to Pike Street and back to downtown Covington. Be careful on the roads through and around Devou Park — most do not have sidewalks, although traffic is usually light.
Highland Pike: From Ky. 17 to just short of Kyles Lane in Fort Wright. It’s 1.25 miles long with a 345-foot elevation gain, resulting in a 4.9 percent grade. This hill starts out slowly, deluding you into thinking it might be an easy climb. But once you pass the businesses, the climb gets a little steeper. It has a sidewalk all the way into the subdivisions of Fort Wright. A bonus, if you can find it, is a route to enter the trails that lead you to Highland Cemetery and a short cut to Fort Mitchell. And if you really want to punish yourself, find your way to Highland Pike and run up Henry Clay Avenue. It’s “crazy steep,” says runner Jon Minzner, and it is: I measured it at a third of a mile, with a 14.5 percent grade, double that of any other hill on this list.
Dudley Road: From Ky. 17 to Winding Trails Drive in Edgewood. It’s .78 miles long with a 317-foot elevation gain, resulting in a 7.7 percent grade. Rebuilding of this road last year completed the construction of sidewalks all the way to the 3L Highway. It resulted in one of the steepest long hills in the area, thrilling runners who previously could not safely run along the narrow, congested road. Now, some do it repeatedly. “Dudley hill is my favorite and worst,” Erin Webb of Edgewood said. “It’s extremely challenging, and it hurts at the end. I have been training on Dudley this season for Yamacraw (a 50K run in West Kentucky) and just recently did three repeats without walking/stopping with Jon Minzner. Now I have to up my goal to five repeats.”
Dixie Highway: From Pike and 11th streets in Covington to Dixie Highway and Kyles Lane: It’s two miles with a 395-foot elevation gain, resulting in a 3.7 percent grade. For an added attraction, said Eric Kavalauskas, you can run up the steps that go up to Gateway College from the bus stop. (A note: Be careful here. This short stretch of Dixie Highway, just north of the old Water Company Building. does not have sidewalks, and the shoulder is narrow. Run facing the traffic, and give the cars some leeway — drivers probably are not expecting you.) This is the hill that Craig “Wheels” Wheeler ran to mimic the climb in the Badwater 135 race, from Death Valley to the Whitney Portal. But he would run it five to six times in a row.
Spaghetti Knob: From 12th and Patterson streets in Newport, then right on Grandview Avenue to West Broadway Street: It’s six-tenths of a mile with a 198-foot elevation gain, resulting in a 6.3 percent grade. This is in the old Italian section of Campbell County, up in the hills of South Newport, overlooking the rest of the city. It’s a small community of tight, winding, hilly streets. The sidewalks peter out on this route, and the roads aren’t great, but the traffic is light. And the photo opportunities at the top are reason enough to do this route.
Taylor Avenue-Memorial Parkway: From Covert Run Pike and Taylor Avenue in Bellevue, then left onto Memorial Parkway to Elmwood Ave, just past Highland High School in Fort Thomas. It’s 2.5 miles with a 340-foot elevation gain, resulting in a 2.6 percent grade. This is really two hills. The climb up Taylor Avenue is short (four blocks) but steep (a 6.8 percent grade). When you hit the top of Taylor Avenue, you get a bit of a break, with a short descent until you turn onto Memorial Parkway, where you have a slow, steady incline all the way into Fort Thomas. I stopped near the high school, but you can keep going to Tower Park and beyond.
Ky. 17: From Hands Pike to Pelly Road. It’s 2.2 miles with a 304-foot elevation gain, resulting in a 2.6 percent grade. This is another slow, mostly steady uphill. It climbs for a while, then deludes you into thinking you’re going downhill as you approach the bridge over Fowler Creek. But then, it’s climb, climb again for the next half mile until it levels out. This route doesn’t have sidewalks — it’s still too country for that, but it does have wide shoulders, and Brian Barclay, who runs out that way, said he feels safe doing so.
Paul Long writes weekly for the NKyTribune about running and runners. For his daily running stories, follow him at dailymile.com or on Twitter @Pogue57