Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Its Always Hard

Last night, I was running through my neighborhood and my 9 year old was on her bike. I was rounding a corner to go up a short hill so it is not that surprising that I slowed down. She turned and asked me...

"When was running 4 miles hard for you?"

I was running 4 miles last night but it made me wonder what has changed to make her think it is any easier for me to run 4 miles now as opposed to several months ago. I did answer her, honestly.

"Honey, running 4 miles is always hard for me. Running 2 miles is hard. Running is hard. Just some days, it is harder than others."

I thought about that since my last 3 mile run was much harder to complete than my 8 mile run was. You would think it should be the other way around.

Today was the dreaded hill work out. I don't like hills, they make me work harder than I want to. Since I live in Tennessee, it is nearly impossible to avoid hills. Even my "easy" neighborhood route has hills. These neighborhood hills pale in comaparion to ....Commerce Street.

We met at APSU and jogged over to Commerce Street. Of course, we had to go UP some hills to get over there and I freely admit it...I walked the hill. I knew I was going to every bit of everything I had to do Commerce Street.

As we were standing on the corner of Riverside and Commerce, looking up (and up and up), I knew that Chuck had lost his mind. The route we were doing is about 1/3 of a mile. We would run up Commerce to 2nd street, turn right up the hill and continue to the top of Madison Street. Sounds easy, right? Yeah. Let me see you run it.

Chuck and Lucas took off like the show off gazelle's that they are (I am teasing, I like Chuck and Lucas and they are great to work with). Brittany started with me but before we were half way up the hill, she pulled ahead. She would always turn at the top of Madison and come back down to meet me and go the final push up to the top of the hill.

up 1- 4.25/ down 4.15
up 2 - 4.39/ down 4.27
up 3 - 4.47/ down 4.19
up 4 - 4.46/ down 4.47
up 5 - 4.52 1

Chuck was willing to let 4 be our workout tonight but Brittany and I said we could do another run up. After we finished, we did a very easy 1 mile back to where the cars were parked.

My legs are like jello. On the way back, we were crossing a busy road and the light was about to change. I sprinted (or attempted to) a short distance to beat the light. It was then my legs decided to get my attention, the tops of my thighs specifically. "Uhm hello, what in the world do you think you are doing? Stop it!"

I know I am going to be sore some but I have a few days off before I go back out for a run. For all that I felt like I wanted to keel over, it was a good work out.

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