Arb hills

I decided to do some hill repeats at the “Arb” (a public park with some good trails) yesterday.  I had about a mile plus run from a parking lot to the Arb and tackled one of the better hills in the park.  There are steeper trails, but I picked one that had about a 5-6% slope that runs about .65 of a mile.  I had already decided that I would do at least two repeats, and that three would be a homerun.  So naturally I had to do three, although as I was working on my second one I was thinking that I had had enough of that fun.  But I did all three up and downs and obviously felt heroic about it (you know – the mind over matter thing). 

After coming back down and during the first quarter mile of the mile and a half run back to my truck I was so tired and remember thinking “ok, this is supposed to be fun?”  and I forced myself to look at the trees and listen to the birds and such (I wasn’t listening to music on this run), but it was still hard.  By the time I got to the paved trail with about ¾ of a mile to go I had somehow gotten myself to run faster and faster, to the point where I was running a sustained 7 min/mile pace (awesome for me) and I remember thinking “now this is fun…”.  It was hard, but it was somehow really fun.