Today I finally conquered the hill we live on,

at least as far as our apartment. It’s pretty easy to run on my own, but the problem is: little blondie has a down-right menacing tendency to gain 50 pounds each and every time I pop him into the jogging stroller. I think I’m switching him to skim milk sometime soon. I’ve been kind of embarrassed that I can’t make it up the hill, because it’s really not all that steep, or even long-and I have a pretty decent light-weight jogging stroller, so it should be no problem. I haven’t attempted the hill in the past week or so, but today I was reading a blog about some rock-climbing folks, and it was full of photos taken off the top of those crazy huge mountain ranges you find in Alaska, and I thought ‘curse word! what sort of elevation gain does my street have? It’s a pimple-sized hill!’ So I strapped little blondie into said stroller, and yes, he ballooned out as soon as I started up the driveway (it’s a hill, too) but I shouted ‘not today, little man!’ or at least I wanted to.

I’d never tried running down and up the hill first off, but I managed to today. This didn’t seem to really count since I’d just had coffee and I wasn’t worn out yet from the 25 other little hills that comprise my usual route (there isn’t actually anywhere flat to run around here), so I tired myself out by running the route. I arrived back at the bottom of the hill feeling done with running. I almost whimped out, but I told myself if I mentally wouldn’t let myself stop, I physically wouldn’t stop. All there is to it. To my disbelief-I’ve told myself this many, many times before with no magical result- it worked! Part of the sidewalk up the hill is behind a hedge, so if you had driven by, you probably would have thought I was walking by my speed, but no, world-that was me running all the way up the hill. Now I have this idea to buy one of those cheap plastic watches so I can start beating my time. Eventually I’ll be sprinting up that hill, just booking.