Nerds, Runners, and Animal Lovers: We Love Hills

We Love Hills

Back in high school cross country, we would always reserve Mondays for hill training. We went to a park about 30 minutes from our school and just ran repeats up the hills. The first was the sledding hill, next was the known to us as the mountain, and the third was named the baby killer. Now, keep in mind we were all from Ohio and were really used to running on fairly flat trails. Our mountains are more like ant hills (thank you glaciers). When we would run up the hills at this park, all we did was complain about how terrible they were and how we felt like we were dying, until we hired an assistant coach. Our assistant coach wasn't hired until my senior year, so I only got a small sample of her craziness. The first Monday she came with us, she heard some complaints when running uphill. She stopped all of us and said that, while running uphill, we had to yell "WE LOVE HILLS!". She told us that if we shouted it enough, one day we might actually start to believe it. We thought it was really stupid, but we did it anyways, and it made hills easier not because we loved hills, but rather because we got a kick out of shouting it and watching people's reactions. It became a team thing. We actually started to shout it out during races as encouragement for our teammates. Needless to say, shouting "WE LOVE HILLS" was actually beneficial to our team.

Now, a year and a half later, I live in Pennsylvania where that park in Ohio looks flat. I literally look out my window and see miles and miles of hills and mountains. My campus itself is on top of a hill. Since I recently started running again, I have been trying to slowly increase my mileage. For my shorter runs, I do my best to avoid the hills and stay in the allotments behind my dorm (which are fairly flat). Yesterday, however, was my designated long-run day. A year ago I was able to run about 8 miles, but as of now my long run is at approximately 4.5 miles. This is the longest I've had to run around my campus so I decided to go along a different route around town. The first mile and a half was great! My pace was good, my heart rate was steady, nothing hurting, and my music was keeping me motivated... then I got to the first hill. It was fairly high, probably a quarter mile long, and I was ready. In my head, I thought "It's just one hill, one little bump in the road (pun intended), I can do this." I finished the hill strong. To my surprise, on the other side of this hill, was a bigger, longer hill. As I ran up the second hill the negative thoughts started: "Why did I run this way? What the hell was I thinking? Hills suck.. I suck... running is terrible..." I finished that hill, and struggled up the next. There was a steady downhill for a while, but the last mile of my run was entirely uphill again. I felt so defeated and discouraged when I remembered what my coach told me in high school. In my head, I started to think "I love hills." As I ran I kept repeating it over and over in my head while thinking of the memories of running in high school.

I was so focused on thinking "I love hills" that I was almost surprised to see my dorm at the end of my run. I know it seems like such a small, ineffective thing to do, but I encourage any of you who run to start thinking about how much you love hills as you run. Also, for those of you who are runners, I highly suggest logging your runs on Map My Run. It will show you the change in elevation of your run. When you log the workout it will show you a image like the one below. (This is not the run I mentioned above)