<< April 22, 2008 >>
back to day one

i'm now 25% of the way through my training, and at hills day number two. these are "long" hills, and take about two minutes. i run them just about as hard as i can, trying to keep the same pace for the whole workout, and try to finish strong. it's tough.

but the one nice thing is that i run them on heartbreak, where, yesterday, some twenty-five thousand people ran it, including lance armstrong. i saw him run by my neighborhood, and i wish i could say it was an amazing thing, but it was just a guy running by in a yellow shirt. ok, he won seven tours, so, yes. it was pretty exciting. anyway he had this to say after the race:

Then I had this period where everybody seemed to talk them down - 'They're not that big a deal, running the hills of Boston; don't worry about it.' They were wrong.

so today i wake up early, struggle to get out of bed, and feel a little tired and pretty stiff. my sunday run was amazing - still buzzing from saturday's game, full of energy from my pasta dinner the night before, and the two short runs in the previous days - it was perhaps the easiest sixteen miles i've ever run. today was not going to be like that.

on my fifth trip up the hill, someone was biking up on the other side of the former comm. ave. street railway median. he yelled out to me, "you shoulda been here yesterday!" initially, a groan was the only sort of response i could muster, but then after thinking about it for a couple of paces, i yelled back, "next year!" without looking back, he raised his arm, and gave me a thumbs up.

the last two hills a little bit easier this week.