There are 2 types of runners.............

The type of runner that sees a steep hill and says, 'no way', and avoids the hill....and the type of runner that embraces that hill, saying, 'this makes me a stronger runner.' My husband made this little quote up. I admit, I used to be, and still may be at times, the first described runner ;) BUT, I am learning to be the second runner more and more every day.

Last week was our second week of prescribed hill repeats from our coach. We have a hill a few miles from our house that Matt likes to call "The Beast." Yeah, does that explain it well enough? ;) It takes about 1 minute or maybe longer to reach the top of the hill. This may not really seem like a long amount of time to most. Why don't you just try it, OVER and OVER again. Sprint up it as fast as you possibly can, only think you are through the pain, for it to steepen up even more to the point you feel like you are hyperventilating. THEN, sprint down the hill, using fast strides, and when you get to the bottom, then break out the wind sprints for 1 minute x 2. Then, as if that wasn't joyous enough, do it all again multiple times ;) Did I mention it was 5 am and still dark while we are doing this? This is after warming up for around 5 miles beforehand. It totals up to be almost 10 miles when we are finished. (uh, "finished" can be taken many ways :)

I'm sure we are known as "The Crazies" around these parts ;) We only get up that early to avoid traffic on that route. Otherwise, running the hill wouldn't be possible.

We are getting stronger, nonetheless, and hope to conquer these hills with a little more ease by the end of August, when Ironman Canada nears ;)

Pollen here, pollen there..............

Pollen, pollen EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!!





These pictures really don't do it justice :)
They were taking the Easter Sunday afternoon. We spent the weekend with my family, and had very good intentions of getting this ride in Saturday morning/afternoon in Meridian. Factor in the rainstorm first which postponed the ride, then the drive all the way to Meridian to find that the route we had mapped out was closed due to road construction, and we ran out of options. We decided to turn the planned Saturday long bike into a long run. Luckily, we had brought our running shoes/shorts because we had planned on doing a brick run after the bike that day.

On to Bonita Lakes=====I haven't run these trails since I first moved to Meridian. When I ran the trails, I would run the single-path trail. I believe it was a 6.2 mile route, maybe? Our friend, Stacy, told us the new gravel trail was around 4.6 miles, so we decided at first, that we would run it 3 times, and we should be good to go for our weekend long run. Notice I said, "at first". Holy crap!!!! Some of those inclines were so steep it felt like we were walking up the hill instead of running. Maybe trail shoes would have been a good investment?! Now, maybe I am dramatizing just a little, or maybe our legs were trashed due to the 10 mile hilly route with multiple sprint/hill repeats we had just done 2 days earlier. Either way, this run wasn't very, errr, refreshing for the two of us ;) We ended up getting in 2 laps of the trails, and added on mileage around the lower lake. It was, however, BEAUTIFUL!!! You could not ask for a more beautiful time of year----spring had definitely sprung..........dogwoods in full bloom, tulips and daffodils around the lake, bradford pears in full bloom. We got in our car and both decided that we needed to plan to come back to the trails, and bring our Ironman Canada trainees, before Canada to work on our marathon training.

We got lots of family time on Easter, and enjoyed spending time with everyone.



Sunday after church and breakfast at church, we packed and headed back. We are a sight for sore eyes, all packed in with 2 Doodles, a crate, and all of our luggage and bikes ;)