Detailing sublimity

My normal Monday/Thursday route, which I’d like to expand.

“Madame, does all this writing of the bullfights bore you? Old lady: No, sir, I cannot say it does, but I can only read so much of it at one time.I understand. A technical explanation is hard reading.” — Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

I wrote a couple of weeks ago in the post Oh noooooooooooooooo! that I have to design a new route. Since then, I’ve tried a few things, but nothing that works well. Here’s what I’m working with as I try to redesign my Monday and Thursday route. 

I start at that little black point in the middle and end at the gold point. Along the way, I have a series of uphills and downhills. 

This is my first major downhill. It’s about a quarter of a mile and a 60 ft elevation change according to the Footpath app.

I pay it all back on a major uphill, which is longer but about the same elevation change.

This is the only flat bit of the run. It’s on a very busy street that I like to minimize distance along because its busy-ness annoys me.

Then, it’s back up hill, this time with a 95 foot gain. 

Then I get it back. 

And I finish with a little uphill sprint, about a 34 foot gain.

The whole thing is about 5K, which used to be fine for my midweek short runs. But now I’d like to add about 1K/1000 meters to it, just for fun and fitness. The issue is: how? 

I want to add some flats, just because this run can be annoyingly hilly. I might add on to section 3, the busy street because it’s easy, but that’d be a real bummer. I hate running in traffic. I could also add to section 2, simply continuing straight, but that runs me alongside the edge of the hill I descend in section 5, and there’s no way to keep that flat unless I go all the way around the hill, adding about 3K instead of just 1. 
I could also just design a whole new route, but I like my start spot and where I park, and, as I said the other week, those constraints are real for the daily runner. 
So why do all this? What could be the fun in the mundane little details of do-I-turn-or-do-I-not-turn? 

Because it’s through the mundane details that sublimity emerges. Hemingway said in The Sun Also Rises “A technical explanation is hard reading.”, or, but to slog through them is to see that what you thought was the end of the line for your practice is not the end at all; there’s more there to do and discover. 

Tinkering with details in a practice like running or writing or drawing or piano isn’t navel gazing or dilly dally-ing. It is focus; a blocking out of noise and ennui, of anxiety or the numbing pleasure of ease. Keep focusing on details; keep documenting them and working them out. That’s movement, and that’s valuable in a world that wants to keep you paralyzed.