Today Marie and I revisited the ginormous OHSU/Terwilliger hill from last week. I was a little nervous b/c last week's time/pace was such a disappointment to me at 11:38 min/miles with so many stops and no kids (and yes I know I was being too hard on myself). This week, we did 3 miles instead of 4.5, but Marie also had her little boy with her in the stroller. On one hand I was hopeful that b/c we were doing less mileage we could shave some time off last week, but once we added the baby in the stroller I knew we would end up adding time onto our pace :( On the other hand, last week I stopped so many times on the ascent I thought maybe I should just forget our time and focus on my goal to be simply making the whole run w/o stopping!
The run itself was actually pretty nice. Running through the hills has lots of forresty areas on both sides and the air feels clean and fresh. The weather was in the 40's and felt like it could start raining at any second, but never actually did. I wore only my capris, a long t-shirt and my Ani hat.For whatever reason, there was like a thousand other runners on the road and they all seemed to be running opposite us so we got lots of smiling, nodding faces giving us encouragement :)
I'm truly amazed by my friend who absolutely smoked me even though she was running with her son in a stroller (up a ridiculous hill) and I just had myself. Towards the middle of the run I actually had to tell her not to wait up for me and not to talk to me b/c I couldn't chat and run at the same time! The run was really hard, but I eventually got into a 'zone' and I didn't even notice the plateau which immediately proceeds the last ascent to the restaurant which lives at the crest of the hill, so our descent felt like a prematurely happy surprise.
Before we started today I was determined not to stop running of my own volition, but was secretly waiting for the one street we had to cross so I could take a quick stop to rest while waiting for the cross walk (this particular intersection is, in fact, simply too dangerous to jaywalk)... However, some other runner (not Marie) got to the light ahead of me so the flippin walk signal came on just as I approached.... so no rest for me :( In the last 1/4 mile, I tapped all my reserve energy to run as fast I could possibly muster and was actually able to catch up to Marie.... literally as we crossed our proverbial 'finish line.'
When Marie pulled out her phone to check our 'stats' I cringed b/c the run felt incredibly long and I knew we were probably running 12-13 min/miles. So, I was shocked when she told me we had actually been running at a 10:43 min/mile pace!! Wahoo! We had shaved 53 seconds off our time from last week WITH a child in tow AND I had made the whole run w/o stopping to run a single time. Ummm....... WINNING!!
This weeks run really helped my confidence :) After today, I really believe I might be able to do the Shamrock run w/o embarrassing myself... and hey, the 9.3 miles of the shamrock is over 1/3 the distance I need to do for the marathon. I know there is quite a difference between 9 miles and 27 miles, but I suddenly feel like the marathon is a real thing which might possibly be within reach of a non-athlete mom like myself :) Next week I do 5 miles and I'm really looking forward to tackling the hill again :)
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