The Descents Project | Episode 1 | Segment: “Downhill Hell”

by Chase Parnell — April 23, 2020

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Welcome to the first installment of The Descents Project, where I’m going to seek out cool downhill Strava segments in the Central Oregon area and see if I can’t steal some records. Why? Well, all of my 2020 races have been cancelled and I’m somebody that’s at least partially driven by a competitive impulse. This project will hopefully motivate me to run hard and search out interesting places to run on a weekly basis.

This is not for you purists out there that just like to be free, turn off the noise and escape into the wilderness. I’ll be holding a GoPro, using my GPS watch and likely listening to loud music during these descents. There’s a time and a place for everything.

I’m admittedly not starting out with my best foot forward on this one and almost scrapped this video altogether until my better half convinced me to try to salvage what video I could. See, I forgot to hit the internal stabilizer on the GoPro so the footage came out super shaky. It drives me nuts! I promise the next “episode” will be higher quality in that regard. There’s also something about the wide-angle of the GoPro that makes the terrain look fairly flat. I swear, it’s way steeper than it might appear!

Okay, hope you enjoy the video. Let me know if the project peeks your interest and if it inspired you to either go after this segment record or motivated you to tackle a descent in your area of the world. Let’s keep pushing ourselves, stay fit, and run fast.

Link to the Strava data.

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