Hill-arious

The Way Forward

On Monday I did hill repeats and since I haven't been doing them as often as I should I was a bit apprehensive.  I warmed up with ten minutes easy and then started the day's task.  "Keep it steady, stand tall, abs in" was the mantra that kept me into a rhythm (odd I know, but whatever works, eh?) Quick recovery jog down, and up we go again a bit faster, "keep it steady, stand tall, abs in," jog down, up again with a little more "oomph!" this time with just "maintain" being the broken record in my head. 

When I reached the crest of the hill this time, a little boy who had been drawing on his driveway in chalk piped up, "how many times are you going to run up that hill?!" I laughed and said, "until I get tired."  He replied quite seriously with, "Oh.  Well....couldn't you do something more fun instead?"  To which I responded, "I could but sometimes you need to work hard to enjoy the fun things more."  He paused, started drawing with the chalk again and with a tilt of his head looked and me and said with no restraint, "then keeeep gooooiiinnggg!!!"  It was so hilariously cute but fortunately I didn't laugh. 

Each successive hill repeat he'd say "go go go!" and when I said in a pant at the top that I would do one more he said, "FASTER! YOU CAN DO IT!  FASTER! FASTER!"  until I finished.  I slowed and walked over to him and thanked him for helping me.  To which he responded, "yup, can you go have fun now?" With a breathless laugh I said, "yeah, I'm going to go have some fun now."  My own little cheering section certainly helped me focus on those repeats!  I cooled down with another ten minute easy run and some stretching.

P.S. The April, May, AND June issues of RW all came in the mail on Monday as well.  Ridiculous.  :P