Tuesday, August 24, 2010

60 days to go

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/45909074

I went for a late run last night due to both the heat we've been having and the fact that I forgot to plug in my ForeRunner until about 8. After letting it charge up, I geared up and went out to tackle a longer run. This week I'm going to make it through week 1 of the training program (for real) which means I need to run 3-4-3-5 miles this week. That's really quite a lot for someone who couldn't make it two miles without dying for the longest time. I didn't run much over the weekend, so I decided to take the 4 mile run on while my legs were still relatively fresh. Of course, since it was so late by the time I went out it would have been a poor idea to run the trail since it's unlit. That means I'm left with one option: hills.

It had been a couple of weeks since I had tried to take on the big hill near the office, so I decided to do that instead of going directly up to the office complex where there's a flat half mile-ish loop that I can run over and over. I mistimed the light right before the hill and had to sprint across the intersection - not a good start. As the angle started becoming more steep, I remembered back to just after I had moved here and started walking to work once in a while. The first day I walked up the hill I had to stop part way up because my legs hurt. I was so un-used to that physical exercise and especially hills, so I was going to show the hill who was boss. And I did. And then I kept going. I took the short downhill before the office loop to recover my legs, then padded my distance on flat terrain before heading back down the hill overlooking the parks. As I got closer to home I realized I was going to come up short of 4 miles unless I ran the very steep hill near the apartment, and that wasn't going to happen since I was starting to feel tired. Instead I ran down to the ball fields and in front of the school before turning around and heading back up. By the time I stopped running and walked I was at about 4.3 miles.

I ran the whole thing, except where stoplights made me pause. Since I was out so late I only had to wait once, so this was essentially a continuous run. It was not only the furthest I've made it without stopping, I did it conquering a pretty mean hill. I'm getting somewhere, and it feels damn good.

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