Visions of San Francisco

This morning the Team in Training group was scheduled to run 10 miles. After doing 30 on the bike last night, I was curious how my legs would feel. I figured I would be ok on a relatively flat course. That should have been a warning right there.

On the drive down this morning, I witnessed a nice little lightning storm. Would we be able to run? When I got to our meeting spot this morning, they handed out maps. Uh-oh. Hills were on tap. And lots of them. And big ones. Very little flat spots at all. Hmmmm. Would it be a good day or a day gone bad.

We took off running and were told that if it started storming to find a shelter. One of the mentors lived along the route, so we were also given directions to her house - just in case. As we got into the hills, you could see the heavy mist and feel the humidity in the air. Humidity is bad enough, but ad hills to that and you have some very sweaty, heavy breathing individuals. There was one hill on the route that I'm pretty sure got to everyone. I don't think anyone ran up that hill. I became a walker for a brief moment this morning. But we've got to do it. There will be hills in San Francisco and the more we practice on them here, the more prepared we will be.

My legs did much better than I thought they would. They were not sore at all from yesterday. My quads did burn going up some of the hills, but it wasn't the legs that stopped me on the big one. It was the humidity. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to that, no matter how often I run in it. It just makes it hard to breathe.

Toward the end of the run, we did get some of the rain that had been threatening us. It was just a light, steady rain and was actually kind of nice. It helped make the last couple of miles a lot easier. I don't mind running in the rain. It turned out to be a good day afterall.