Plan B

Well, we did not anticipate the upcoming Jewish holiday interfering with our Wednesday night track practice.

After fighting traffic out of DC and getting to Arlington, a police officer told me that the track was closed due to a high school football game. Ugh! I had fought traffic to get to the track and was dressed and ready to go.

Luckily, the coaches instituted a Plan B that involved running through the very hilly neighborhood and doing "hill repeats."

We started out with two loops through the neighborhood to warm up and then found a long hill that had the added benefit of having a noticeable additional incline at the top. It was a very deceiving hill. It kicked your ass as you neared the top!

We ran the hill a handful of times. It was a challenge, but we all appreciate that it was good for us. Frankly, I prefer the hill training vs. the track. The track sucks!

After we finished the hill runs, we ran back to the track and did leg strengthening exercises. Always fun to exercise in front of groups of folks hanging around a football stadium.

My feel-good moment of the night came when I was running the hills. A fellow runner that I have always considered as quite good (she's an 8-8.5 minute miler) ran with me for the last two hills. As we finished the last hill, she gave me such a great compliment. She said that she has noticed that I have really improved since we first started the 10-miler training. It made me smile to actually have someone appreciate the efforts I have made