Warm morning: 60F rising to 66F, sunny (w/ waning gibbous in blue skies). Objective: club run with descending/ascending Parkway (Spirit Crusher Hill) before and after meet up w/ club. The Cat Who Must Be Obeyed had A Need just as I was leaving and I was already a couple of minutes late to get to the club meeting place. Now a good 5 minutes late, after a mile of gentle warm up I decided to crank up the pace. I was descending the Parkway at that point, which is a 1.7 mile long hill. From the bottom of the hill into old Snoqualmie I tried to keep the pace up, wanting to reduce the lateness of my arrival. From my house to the high school is 3.8 miles, a bit farther than I thought - "run even faster!"
I scarcely had time to catch my breath and say hello when the 10:00 pace group was ready to go. We didn't spend any time at all getting into a 9:40 pace and stayed there pretty much the whole run, out the Snoqualmie Valley Trail to the North Bend library and back. We picked up another woman on the way back who seemed interested in joining the club. That was fun. :)
At about 9.5 miles I was back on my own, and running towards home. When I hit the Parkway (S.C. Hill) I dropped down to about an 11:00 minute mile, which gradually slowed to nearly 13:00. The last half mile of the hill is incredibly steep and the sun was beating down. My usual heat nausea began to arise, but wasn't too bad. About 5 minutes into the hill climb, a pedestrian stopped me. She was an elderly Chinese woman who wanted very much to ask me something, the only English word of which was "Seattle," and then she was making binocular gestures with her hands on her eyes. Uh oh. You are a long way from Seattle, ma'am. I tried to help. Dangit, how do you say "very far" in Chinese? She seemed to want me to point the direction, so I did, repeating the word "bus," while she nodded vigorously. Hope she made it.
I am thrilled with this run! I pushed my pace for a long time, and then ran up a killer hill -- all just 2 weeks after a marathon! From mile 2 through mile 9, all miles were within 30 seconds of marathon pace (they ranged 9:26-9:50) except for mile 9, which included my running group's cool down -- and even that mile was only 10:03. The "easy miles" category on my blog record seems ill fitting today!
We interrupt this blog for a philosophical reflection: I find that, depending on the day, I either hate or love the Bobby McFerrin song, Don't Worry Be Happy. The frowny, "realistic" Sno finds it highly irresponsible to have such a gleeful attitude regardless of circumstances. On the other hand, in Bobby's own words: "in this life you have some trouble - when you worry you make it double..." I thought about that at the bottom of the hill today. :)
Now I have to rest and rehydrate to be sharp for a wedding gig this afternoon. Sun is here on the one day I really actually need it. (Outdoor wedding.) Tomorrow the clouds return. Life is good!
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