Running Journal

I CONQUERED MOUNT KILIMANJARO TODAY!!!

Okay so it was only the Nisqually Hill, and it was more like a slow conquest; but it still felt like a victory to me. The never ending "mountain" wasn't too bad. I had planned to run the gauntlet twice, but I did not have enough time for that, so I only trekked it once. I walked from my house (with my dog) out to Martin Way, just past the Ridgeview neighborhood entrance and then decided we should run down as much of it as we could. We ran down the whole thing in about 5 1/2 minutes! FIVE AND A HALF MINUTES to run down a hill!!!! That's a long hill. Considering it takes forever in a car going 50-60 miles an hour...that's a looong hill. Perhaps the folks training for Nike should venture this way. I hear they have some pretty ugly hills to conquer on their course.
At the bottom I sucked down a triberry gu (for extra energy), gave my dog a rest, and started the long journey up. Running for about a minute (before my heart and lungs told me to start walking), I looked back and thought "Wow, I've made it about halfway up. Cool!" Still walking...and the hill just keeps going, so I thought "okay, I ran about 1/3 of the way. That's pretty good." I decided to run a little bit more (do you know how hard it is to start running in the middle of a hill!!!!???? Oy!). Ran for about 30-45 seconds, looked up and back and thought "ohkaeey...so running 1/4 of the hill is not too bad..right???" =0) I walked most of the rest of the way home with a few spurts of running, but I had this horrible cramp in the top of my left foot. Weird. It started on Saturday toward the end of my run that day too. I guess I just haven't worked it out yet. Can you believe that even after all that walking/running Jazz (the dog) still wanted to go down one of our customary streets as we passed by? It didn't take too much coaxing to get him by that street though. One blessed shower and a yummy lunch and i was human again, though not really wanting to go to work. A nap sounded better. =0)
I am taking it easy tomorrow, but next week I plan on tackling that monster again. Twice! It serves two purposes...training for the marathon, and training for Mount St. Helen's. If I can successfully do that latter, I should have no trouble with the former. Looking forward to both challenges. Wooohooooh!