Sister Timothea Kept Me Going

Well, not really, but I will explain later.

Last night was hills. Which is NOT what the email to the group today said. All the email said was: Tomorrow night we will be at Game Day at 6:30 and will be heading to Eden Park." Once we were all gathered at Game Day Cafe, Joe told us we would have an "easy 1.5 mile run to Cliff Street" which is where we would be doing our hills. Cliff Street? That does not sound fun. Neither was our "easy" run. If you are familiar with Mt. Adams, you know what I mean when I say it is neither flat or easy. We took Columbia Parkway to the steps leading to Hill Street. Luckily we did not run the steps. I think I would have died. Anyway, just getting to the hill was a pain. I had to stop and walk for the first time, which I never, never, do. One of the twins even stopped when she came up behind me and asked if I was ok. I must have looked like I was really hurting.

This hill was amazing. It had about 8 turns to the summit. It was neverending. I just mapped it on mapmyrun.com to check out the elevation. Basically, over .34 miles, we went from .75 feet to 811 feet. Crazy. ( I will have to take my husband, Bill, out later to drive the hill so I can show him how crazy it is. It just makes me feel better. You know, "look what I can do!") The workout was: start at the bottom and go halfway and then back. Everyone got done with the first one and said "that was only halfway?!!!" Then we did the whole hill halfway and back. Repeat both.

Let me tell you, I was barely moving. Here's where Sr. Timothea comes in. I had this religion teacher in high school who was very old-school. Anyway, she always said that if you had a little voice in your head that made you not do things that you were supposed to do, like help your mom clean, that it was really the devil and he was tempting you to do his hellish works. What you had to do is yell "Stop it, Devil" in your head and just do that good thing. Because I was probably delirious running these hills I had these thoughts come to me out of nowhere. So I yelled "Stop it, Devil!" in my head when I was thinking about walking, which made me laugh almost out loud, but it also made me finish the hill. I probably think this story is way more funny than anyone else would and I can't believe I just wrote it down. I think of some crazy stuff when I run.

Anyway, just when I finished the last full repeat, I was thinking "I'm done! I'm done!" But then Joe gave us a choice; we could do one more full repeat or two halves. I'm no idiot. I picked two halves. That's two downhills along with the uphills.

Then he promised us an easy run back, which we all did not believe. He THEN revealed to us that he didn't even make up the run there, the other coaches did. So this one really would be easy.

All right. I am actually GLAD I labored through the hills. Even running back I felt faster and that I could run easier. But it still stank.