Strava Segment & Running Meme of the Week: Rocky Butte West Climb

This week’s SSOTW is one where I especially look like the little girl on the bottom.

It’s a hill climb, which may not always be pretty but will always make you a stronger runner.

It’s the Rocky Butte West Climb, and it’s a 1.32-mile segment with a 5% average grade, gaining almost 350 feet and some amazing views in the process. It’s also pretty popular, with 261 people recording a total of 832 attempts so far. The route starts at the bottom of NE Rocky Butte Rd at NE 92nd Ave (near the connection with NE Fremont) and zig-zags up to the top.

The people who have done it the fastest are Paul Balmer (7:36 from May 2018) and Christina Overbeck (10:02 from June 2018). Those are some smoking fast times on that climb, but remember – Strava will give you kudos as well when you run a new top-ten time on any given segment.

You can join Strava for free and if you do, be sure to join the Run Oregon Strava Club! It’s just a virtual club where you can receive and give kudos to other runners, like Dan Chapman, who has logged a total of 104.5 miles this week, or Leah Brown, who ran a training run at my 10k PR pace of 8:15/mile (great job, guys!).