Some of my best friends are hills

I managed to get out of work early enough to get in a run yesterday. The weather was only somewhat crappy. Cold and snowing off and on.

There is a cemetery a mile and a half from my job. The bottom section is mostly flat. The top section is anything but flat. There is a very long and very steep hill to get to the top (total ascent of 196.85 feet according to Garmin).  I decided I was going to tackle the hill. I am not a good hill runner. I can get up them, but my pace slows way down. Especially on this hill. The last few yards are almost straight up. But I did it. And once at the top, the view was beautiful. I could see for miles.

Because I was at the top, I decided to go a little further to a second cemetery which sits behind the big cemetery. I really like this cemetery for some reason. It is well maintained and very peaceful. There are statues and fountains (in the summer) and elaborate headstones. There are also hills, but they are rolling hills and not so bad. I ran around this cemetery twice. There was a man sitting on a bench in this one courtyard area. He waved as I went by. That was nice. I never know if people are going to wave or take out a knife and chase me.

Awesome!

The sun was starting to set so I went back to the big cemetery and started my journey back down the monstrous hill. I’m not very good a downhill either. It seems like it should be easy, but it’s not. I have a fear of tripping and tumbling all the way down.

When I got to the bottom, without tumbling, I still had a lot of energy and I never know when I’m going to have time to run. So I decided to climb the hill again. This time I went three quarters of the way up, then took a side road and a less steep road back down. I then did two laps around the bottom flat section and decided it was time to head back.

My total mileage – 6.22. Not too bad.

A few days ago I bought some new earbuds to go with my MP3 player. The ones I had were terrible and didn’t stay in my ears very well. I bought some Panasonic RP-HJE-120 earbuds and I must say they are awesome! Excellent sound and I could barely feel them in my ears. I got them from Amazon for less than $6.00. Good deal.

Stats:

6.22 miles, 57:22 minutes, 9:13 pace