I love hills.

One of the first things I learned when I started running was that hills can be psychological killers. You see them looming before you and even before you start up them, they can start to take a mental toll. They play head games with you, making you think you can't possibly make it to the top. A friend told me early on that instead of thinking about how much she hated running hills and how miserable she was doing it, she simply repeated this mantra in her head (or out loud, if necessary!): I love hills. That darn positive thinking keeps popping up, doesn't it?? She looks at each hill as a challenge and doesn't allow it to make her back down.

The thing is, this works. Most of the time. This past Saturday our long run was 10 miles over a very hilly course with some steep climbs. Don't get me wrong, there were some long descents, too, and I'm sure it evened out over the haul, but it felt like it was 99.5 percent uphill. I actually have started to love hills through positive thinking...I have seen first hand how much faster and stronger running hills has made me, so I focus on that a lot while running uphill and it helps.

For the first lap of the run, I was pretty fast. I was able to keep up with the rest of the much faster marathoners on the Team. But by the second time we headed up one particularly steep hill (and had already climbed several others along the way), I had fallen off the pace. By the third time going up that hill, I did NOT love hills anymore. I was hurting and tired and no amount of telling myself I loved hills was going to make me love what I was doing at that moment. That being said, my average pace for the duration of the 10 miles was under 12 minutes, which for me on a long run, is fairly outstanding. So even though I did hate the hills by the time I pushed through the last lap, I feel pretty good about my effort.

Which brings us to today. I ran 5 miles with a couple of gentle grades, and I felt every bit of them. I'm still pretty sore. The combo of my faster pace plus the hills on Saturday seems to have left me a bit battered. Which hopefully means I'm building more strength for next time! I love hills. Kind of.