Had a nice run on Sunday morning with friends.  Started down near the bay, ran along the paved trail, 5 am, beautiful.. cold, but beautiful.  Decent pace, headed over to Frontier park where the kids use the hills for snow-sledding to do some hill repeats.

*side note*:  I started an event/personal challenge, titled "Hill Repeats from Hell".  One month of hill training, starting November 18, 2012.  First week, complete 25 hill repeats (any way you wish, five on one day, 20 on another day.. or five a day for five days, etc).  Second week, 50 hills.  Third week, 75 hills.  Fourth week, 100 hills.  I think I'll break down the 4th week into two sessions per day, 10 hills per session, for five days.

Anyways, went over to the hills, did 10 repeats.  15 to go for the week.  I will save 5 for after the local Turkey Trot 5k on Thanksgiving, repeats on the big hill at Presque Isle State Park.  Guaranteed to make some extra room for Thanksgiving dinner!

Life is good, Happy Thanksgiving week!

Designed and carved by my girlfriend and I.  His name is Jack.  (duh)

So yesterday I ran a half marathon.  The "Farmer's Inn" half marathon.  Though I've slowly been (or at least I like to think that I've been) transitioning into more of a trail runner than a road runner, I must admit that I enjoy a good scenic half marathon.  And by scenic I mean hilly.  Flat courses are boring, let's be honest.  Sure, they can be fast, and sure, you might be able to easily get your BQ (not me), but hills are where it's at. Hills are tough.  Hills make you strong.

Something I noticed is that people for the most part know how to go up a hill.  Sure, their posture might not be perfect, etc etc, but they get the gist (or is it jist?  Too lazy to google it, but not too lazy to type out this long parenthetical bullshit about whether or not I spelled it correctly) of it.  However, I noticed that many runners can't run downhill.  I'm no expert, but I'm getting better.  There was a decent pack of us running together for the first mile or so until we all came to a long steep downhill, and I quickly noticed that a large group of runners that were behind me simply were not there anymore.

So, the Farmers Inn half.. great course.  Mile 3 is a big long gravely uphill.  Pretty tough, but I assume running trails that typically have more elevation change than roads has helped me physically and mentally.  Anyways, it was fun, and there was a lot of free food at The End.