Up, Up, and Away

     I'm a country girl to the core.  I love the beautiful country side and the hills of the north country where I live.  Lately, I have gotten up close and personal with a few of them.  Perhaps closer than I ever though necessary!
     We have been training on the hills of SUNY IT and it's a great place to run.  The college kids are gone, very few cars, and rolling hills a plenty.  This past Wednesday, we set out on what Joe promised to be a 4.8 mile run.  I was thinking it would be a easy night.  We jogged up a hill, but then ran down a long lovely hill.  It was then that I realized the way back was up this no longer lovely hill.  It was a hard run, and I had to run intervals on the big hill on the way back, but I turned in a decent time.  Surprisingly, I wasn't sore the next day.
     Today I set out to run 5 miles and include a hill, on purpose!   I ran up what I call high school hill in HP. The bottom if it is about .4 miles of nothing but hill.   Then my plan was to keep running 2.5 miles then turn around and go back down.  I thought the only hill was high school hill.  In my mind, the rest of the road seemed flat.  Boy, was I wrong.  The hill kept increasing slowly, and after I ran it I looked at my GPS.  It was a 2.5 mile, uphill, 400ft in elevation increase climb!   Talk about a work out. The 2.5 downhill was sure fun.  There were the beautiful rolling hills I like to look at. I felt the wind, and my canine companion was humming along next to me, happy as well we were done being mountain goats.
      7 weeks ago I could barely finish a mile. The street I live on used to be my workout, now it's my warm up. Today, I ran up a hill, a big one, and only walked a bit at the top.  I have lost 8 pounds, and am gaining muscle, but those are just good side effects from running.  I am arriving at the point where I know I will survive the run and am starting to enjoy it.  I can run one full hour.  I sleep better, look better, and am challenging myself to do something I have never done before.  I am soaring to new heights and today, sailing down that hill after I pushed myself up it, I felt like I was flying.