Deleted Notes & Queries response: Is running up and down a hill better for you than running on the flat?

Below is a response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on the 31st July 2022

The comment has since been deleted from the website.

This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented under the terms of fair use.

Is running up and down a hill better for you than running on the flat?

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You may have visited those northernmost fringes of Scotland that scatter like biscuit crumbs across the page of an atlas; where, under the aloof gaze of a cartographer, the North Sea fuses seamlessly with the Atlantic Ocean.

Whilst there, you may have unknowingly laid eyes upon Michael Fairbairn as he hobbled through the winding, flat-cobbled streets of Greencliff, leaning on a cane for support like a man two-times his age. You would have caught him on his weekly round trip to and from the small supermarket with its ageing fleet of 15 trolleys, that were shipped to the island during the mid-1970s. You would know him from sight by his determined, forward-leaning gait. It is as if the winter jet stream, that blows off the Kettle Sound, from January to mid-May, and clean through the dark-age meanderings of the town, is pushing him ahead of himself. Truth be told, he walks in the same manner during those Summer and Autumn months, when the wind falls away and an eerie, weatherless lull descends over the stony desert of dull slate roofs, that crowd together, deprived of their rainy iridescence.

Fairbairn's bearing is the product of his upbringing on a caslea – one of those scrappy smallholdings that cling to pastureland so steep that it is only suitable for raising goats and Peffertore cattle. At the foot of Eilean a-Muigh, just outside the old walls that still bear the battle marks of Viking raids, he inserts his walking stick into a natural, lichen-scaled cavity within the buttress of a drystone field boundary, where it joins a number of others, loosely scabbarded in similar nooks. On an upslope or downslope he moves with the pace of a man who is in possession of a pair of fabled seven-league boots. The steeper the incline, the faster he seems to go.

“I was born on the next hill over,” he tells me, with the wind blowing his words back at him, while I attempt to stifle my panting to a point where I can decipher their muffled outlines.

“I adapted to my surroundings from an early age. My bones and muscles developed differently to cope with the gradient. You can see it in my hospital scans. It's quiet a difference. You would think that you were looking at a different species – the way the big bones contour vertically. It's what used to happen to all the hill folk. It's why the Vikings could never lay claim to the island and why our hill-fighters assume an almost godlike aspect in their mythology. They could never outfight us on an incline. Mind, we are all useless on a level playing field. You've seen for yourself. Our legs can't cope with even ground. It's why, even in our traditional homes, the floors are terraced.

“We are a dying breed,” he tells me later. We have both been teetering on a rickety wooden stool, gazing out through the tapering embrasure of the bathroom window, from where there is good view of the Woodgate lighthouse (“No wood grows on the island, so we had to import it. There was a traditional safe route through the strait that the timber vessels used to follow.”)

“After I was born, there was move by the mainland towards improving the health of children on the island, specifically the hill folk. There was some initial resistance to it, but the generation after my own will be the last. The kids now all walk on the flat for at least an hour everyday. I mourn it to a degree, because we are saying goodbye to a certain type of person who was shaped by the island and by their livelihood, but it had to end.”

The Peffertore cattle that are raised by Fairbairn are a stockier and leaner variant of Highland cattle. Like their farmers, they too have evolved to cope with the steep gradients. Rounded spurs along the backs of their hooves dig in to the soil aiding their ascent and descent. These growths allow the males to safely rear up on their hind legs, which is a common threat display during the mating/calving season. This back spur has been incorporated into the design a patented hillwalking boot that is also called the Peffertore.

“Their main claim to fame is that they are the only living creatures who have been able to scale the slope to the fortress tomb of Mahlah, unaided,” said Fairbairn. “She was the eldest daughter of some Old Testament figure. The tomb is in modern day Jordan. The story goes, during the crusades, to prevent it from being plundered, a local warlord encircled the hill burial with a skirt of fine sand that was impossible to climb. Anyone who tried ended up sliding to the bottom. You couldn't even get a tank up it. In the 1970s, somebody with money to burn brought a pair of Peffertore cattle over from Scotland and they went up it no problem. Afterwards they were stars at Jordan Zoo. I think they may have bred from them, though they aren't really suited to the heat. If you go to the Tomb of Mahlah now, all you will find are strings of athletes at the foot of the sand-mound, doing on the spot step exercises, going nowhere.”

I hope this is of help.

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