Archive for January 2009
Stairs can be your friend

Stairs can be your friend

4:54 PM Add Comment
I'm working in Montreal this week, and it's fecking COLD here. I ran outside one morning when the temp got above 20F, but below that I'm a wussy. Happily, I'm staying at the Sheraton downtown, which has about 38 floors. I'm on the 26th floor and the gym is on the 6th, so I've put myself in a good amount of pain by running/walking the 12 floors to the top, then down to the gym floor, then back to the top. It's only about 15 minutes, but the 9 minutes of UP in that feels like PLENTY. Plus, it's a nice temperature and it's peaceful (since I haven't run into another soul there).
Breathing gets easier

Breathing gets easier

3:28 PM Add Comment
I REALLY enjoy running hills. They SUCK from a pain standpoint, but I just love 'em. For one thing, they hurt, and you can only go so slow to try to lessen the hurt, but the hurt remains. As opposed to running on flat land, where you have to go faster to make it hurt more, hills hurt as long as you're on those sonsabitches. They hurt your legs and your lungs. And that lead to my observation today:

I felt pretty good, so I doubled back a little on the 1.5 mile run around my house, to make it a full 2 miles. This may not sound like much, but the extra half mile gave me about another 300 feet of climbing (my property is really pretty steep). So I got a total of about 7oo feet of climbing in that 2 miles. On the first  big climb, my lungs hurt a bit. They hurt on the second climb, too, but not as much. On the last climb - 200 feet over 1/4 mile, my lungs didn't hurt. It felt like my body was being truly efficient in using the oxygen my lungs were pulling in, and that was a very nice feeling.

The moral of the story is - pain temporary, and the more you endure, the better you will feel later.

Happy running.
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