Just a couple of days and Sara and I will be in Italy; visiting her parents. That gives me the option to run in the mountains around Como. I’m really looking forward to that. Real mountains!

According to Sara they are not real mountains. The Italians call them the pre-Alps, because they are not as high as the Alps. Monte Legnone is 2.609 metres high. I call that a mountain. In comparison Signal de Botrange in the Ardennes is with 694 metres the highest point of Belgium. The Vaalserberg is the highest point in the Netherlands, with 322 meters of altitude. So for me the pre-Alps are mountains.

Hill or mountain

For me even a dyke is a mountain, as I have no mountains or hills around me. Today we went out for a walk to do a photoshoot with Vera Bettiol and Nicola Artico, for the new yoga course for La Scimmia Yoga. My watch says that I’ve done almost 10 meters of altitude on our 5 kilometer hike.

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names once stated that hills were smaller than 300 meters of local relief, whereas mountains were higher. However, in the early 1970s this distinction was abolished as broad agreement on the precise measure (1.000 feet) was impossible. So now there are no official classification standards.

Yet, according to National Geographic; ‘Most geologists classify a mountain as a landform that rises at least 1,000 feet (300 meters) or more above its surrounding area.’ That would classify the Vaalserberg as a mountain, but above all that would classify the pre-Alps around Como as mountains.

Real mountains

So maybe for Sara they are not real mountains, but I’m looking forward to running in them. Although, we leave 2 days after the Mighty Marathon, so I’m not sure how run-able my legs are. But good legs or no good legs, I’m going to run.