Hill, Schmill

On Sunday Dave and I drove to one of our state parks for our 8 mile long run.  We had mapped out a 4 mile loop that we would run twice.  Map My Run said that there was a Cat5 hill (which was new to me).  Apparently, of all the hills that are big enough to be rated (those are the key words) a Cat5 is the easiest and Cat1 is the hardest.  What they don't make clear to you is that "big enough to be rated" means you will absolutely cry like a baby when you run (read: hobble) up it.  I tried to capture the elevation change as we ran by the bottom of the hill but the picture just doesn't do it justice.

We were headed to the top of that line of trees but you just can't see the pain in the picture.  It was a little over 0.3 mile STRAIGHT UP.  We were cruising at about an 11:00 pace until we hit the hill (between mile 2 and 3) and then we dropped to around a 16:00 pace.  And it was so hard to keep running up it that it was mentally crushing too.  Dave was being the cheerleader (a role reversal) and we somehow managed to run the whole thing even though I so badly wanted to take a walk break.  The top of the hill felt grand until I remembered 2 seconds later that we were doing the loop twice...so between miles 6 and 7 when we were really beat down we would have to do that hill AGAIN!

We made it to the hill the second time and this time I had to be the cheerleader because Dave was beat down.  I stopped for about 3.5 seconds to walk and then mentally kicked myself in the butt and started running (clomping. hobbling.) again.  We made it to the top and celebrated that we wouldn't have to do that again.  At least not unless we're stupid enough to do a long run there again!

After we survived and made it back to the car we felt pretty awesome-tacular:

Nope, don't know why I look so weird.  I blame the tireds.  Yes, tireds is a noun.

The Stats: 8 miles in 1:34:39 (11:50 average pace)

Mile 1 - 11:35

Mile 2 - 11:35

Mile 3 - 12:41
Mile 4 - 11:24
Mile 5 - 11:38
Mile 6 - 12:08
Mile 7 - 12:16

Mile 8 - 11:25