Since Kevin missed the hills yesterday I agreed to run them with him this morning. When he didn't come out I decided to run up 1600 N at an easy pace towards the hills and see if he came out late and caught up to me. I never saw him. When I reach the base of the hills my body was a little reluctant to repeat yesterday's run alone so I decided to turn around and run back down 1600 N. I ended up running 1.5 miles down to 400 W then back up to 800 E then back down to Main again and home. I was feeling tired, so I worked on my mental toughness a little during the run. Often while running uphill I'll tip the brim of my hat down and look down a little to block out the sight of the uphill ahead of me. This morning I held my head up and mentally focused on and proactively challenged the uphill. I also pondered a little psychology and physics. I imagined myself running 50-100 yards ahead of me and imagined what I would look like if I was running efficiently, strong and confident, and what it would feel like. I then tried to run that way and feel like I imagined myself feeling. Mentally I told myself that if I'm going to be running like that in 50-100 yards anyway it wouldn't be that much harder to start 50-100 yards sooner...so run like that now. Later in the run my thoughts switched to physics, and what it meant to run efficiently. I imagined a large straight arrow representing a force vector on a physics diagram coming out of my hips and aiming straight ahead up the road. I then imagined smaller arrows in up and down and side-to-side directions. These represented wasted energy that should be focused on moving me forward. The image came to my mind of a tulip-shaped flower closing up like a Venus Fly Trap, redirecting and merging all of the smaller mis-directed energy arrows into the large straight arrow moving straight ahead. I consider these mental experiments a success. My legs were feeling pretty heavy the first trip up the hill, averaging only 10:45 pace for the first 1.25 miles up. I averaged 8:29 pace back down, 9:26 back up the second time, then 8:12 the last 1.2 miles back down and home. After averaging only 10:45/mi for the first 1.25 miles, after playing mind games with myself I ended up averaging 9:12/mi overall for the 5.6 miles. | 