Hills for Lill
When R at Livin the Fit Life, who is a fellow runner and 12 in 2012 member, let us know of her plans to run a virtual half marathon in honor of her 95 year old grandmother, I was automatically in! I had my Bay Breeze Half last weekend that I had already run in her honor, but last weekend I thought maybe I would just run another 13.1 and use that one instead.
I am currently living in Oakland, and am finding new running routes each day. You may think that Oakland is like this all the time:
But it's not. There are a lot of nice places in Oakland. And by nice, I mean hilly. According to Garmin, the total elevation gain was about 4275 ft. See the hill right around the 40 minute mark? It went on forever. Well, 10 or 20 minutes, but they seemed like forever.
I went uphill for a really long time and finally found the park I was looking for. I asked some bikers if they knew of a path that was fairly flat and then directed me to the Sunset trail. Either I was not on the Sunset trail or those guys mislead me because the next mile or so was variable. It did "flatten" out after a little while and I had a nice couple of fast, easy miles before deciding that I had no idea where I was and so I turned back. I did not go the same way; I decided to take a different trail, which went pretty much straight down (see above around 1 hour and 15 minutes).
The good thing about all these hills was the view. I had a view of the entire bay and San Francisco, including the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate. It was priceless and well worth the effort.
I took a photo for Grandma Lill and kept going down the hill.
Since I turned around too early, this is how I ended up not running 13 miles. Instead, I ended up with about 10.5. I have this hangup about after I turn around, I don't want to just run around in circles to add miles. I don't know why. But once I turned around, I was like a horse to the stables. So I ended up finishing with about a 10 minute/mile average. But, since I didn't complete my distance, I will just use my Bay Breeze for Grandma Lill's 95th!
I leave you with this. Wessssiiide!
Do you prefer out and backs or loops? Do you like running or walking in new places or do you stick with the same route? Have you ever been to Oakland?
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I went uphill for a really long time and finally found the park I was looking for. I asked some bikers if they knew of a path that was fairly flat and then directed me to the Sunset trail. Either I was not on the Sunset trail or those guys mislead me because the next mile or so was variable. It did "flatten" out after a little while and I had a nice couple of fast, easy miles before deciding that I had no idea where I was and so I turned back. I did not go the same way; I decided to take a different trail, which went pretty much straight down (see above around 1 hour and 15 minutes).
The good thing about all these hills was the view. I had a view of the entire bay and San Francisco, including the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate. It was priceless and well worth the effort.
I took a photo for Grandma Lill and kept going down the hill.
Since I turned around too early, this is how I ended up not running 13 miles. Instead, I ended up with about 10.5. I have this hangup about after I turn around, I don't want to just run around in circles to add miles. I don't know why. But once I turned around, I was like a horse to the stables. So I ended up finishing with about a 10 minute/mile average. But, since I didn't complete my distance, I will just use my Bay Breeze for Grandma Lill's 95th!
I leave you with this. Wessssiiide!
 |
| source |
Do you prefer out and backs or loops? Do you like running or walking in new places or do you stick with the same route? Have you ever been to Oakland?