Thursday, September 13, 2007

The Hill Country Had No Hills

Well, even for one day I couldn't keep up the post-a-day pace. No one really expected that to work out, did they?

Regardless, I've been trying to get back into the whole running thing, and that's been very hard and unreasonably depressing. The problem comes from the fact that when you have a city that goes from ocean to the Santa Ynez mountains in just about 10 miles, the running isn't very flat. I know I moved here from the "hill country", but Austin is only just on the edge of that topography, and you have to go to the outskirts of town to find hills like the one just out my front door here. As a result, the first few times I went running, I lasted a mile or less before I was sure I was going to die. A few days ago, I actually ran 3 whole miles again. It feels like ages since I last did that, and I was happy to finally run the whole planned distance. Well, "run" is a bit of an overstatement, but I didn't walk. Now to work on distance and speed, while continuing this not-dying feeling. I'm really looking forward to my run this afternoon.

Next year, I'm embracing the crazy topography that we have here, and will be doing the Santa Barbara Half-Marathon. Anyone want to work hills with me to prepare for it?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have actually been running a bit here and there lately. I walk my dog at least every other morning for an hour around the neighborhood and "lake" by my house, and I have my running shoes on anyway, so why not? She likes to run a bit, too. I can't run for long, though, and my dog can't sustain a regular pace (she's 13 years old, and just stops whenever she wants to stop). I also get winded very easily, and I'm going to blame it on the thin atmosphere. Maybe when we move to Indiana, I'll take up running for real.