Tuesday Rendezvous

"After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb." 

-Nelson Mandela

My typical Tuesday night is spent at my home away from home: Fleet Feet Brighton & Cobb's Hill.

I promise I'll try to get better blog photographs.
I only have a degree in photography!

Tuesday marked my first official training run towards the marathon. One down, a million more to go! The official run from FF Brighton on Tuesday night is hill repeats. I had 3 miles on my schedule and I knew the route was going to be at least 3.5, hey call me an overachiever. I was joined by Katie and Laura and a ton of other Winter Warriors gettin' their run on. We left after the big crowd because I was too impatient to wait in the long line for the bathroom and I thought if we waited it would be clear. Well the line was shorter, but other people had the same plan I did. Is it weird to take photos of people in line for the potty? Yea thought so. The three of us headed out and I picked up the pace until the first main intersection. I felt like I was flying and was feeling great! I continued to cruise right along Monroe with clear sidewalks free of ice and snow. 

Once I got to the base of Cobb's Hill I had some thinking to do. You see my trusty Garmin failed me last Tuesday. Last week I decided I would do a tempo run up and around the hill and then do one repeat at tempo pace as well. Well I did and I was haulin', great run, felt like Ryan Hall. Until I was about a quarter of a mile from the store (the finish) and realized my Garmin had stopped at 19 minutes. NOOOOOOOOO! Fast forward to this week and I had some retaliation to do, take that Garmin. I decided I would do one trip around at tempo pace and skip the extra repeat. My pace was great going up and around the hill, much faster then normal and on the way down I swear there was smoke coming from my sneaks. Katie even said she couldn't catch up with me, score! We took it a bit easier heading back to the store and compared results at the finish. When I checked my average pace for the run I was right around 12 minutes. What the heck, I am always around 12 minutes. Something must be wrong, I swear I was bookin'. Next time I am putting it on my other wrist, maybe it's faster. 

I finished my Tuesday night rendezvous with a trip to Half Moon for a yummy salad. Once I got home I took a nice hot shower and surfed the web. I cannot believe how many of you have checked out my blog. I am so glad you are enjoying it so far. I can only take credit for about 100 of those visits on the stalker counter :) 

Do you wear a GPS for running?

Ever feel like it isn't accurate?

Ever try running naked? (w/out GPS people!)

P.S. Did you know you could Google "Hill Quote" and you actually get a bunch of quotes with the word hill in it? What did people do before the internet!