Indian Hills' hills

Yesterday my roommate Dani and I got up early to go for a run in the Indian Hills (over by Rock Canyon park) area of Provo. As you could imagine, it is named that way because of how hilly it is over there. As sadistic as it sounds, we knew there were hills and planned to go anyway.

We dropped Dani's car off the Riverwoods, near the mouth of Provo Canyon. Then, we drove over and parked my car by the temple. We both fastened our keys to our shoelaces and took off, up-and-down, up-and-down until we got back to the Riverwoods.

*Sidenote: It was very very cold yesterday morning. It was flurry-ing and windy and just overall frigid. I was wearing long sleeves, long pants, and a sweatshirt. My poor roommate had on a t-shirt and shorts! I think she was really cold.

Once we conquered all of the hills and endured the downhills, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. Ready to get in Dani's car, take a hot shower, and get on with our respective days. Then Dani looked down at her shoes and gasped--the key was gone! Oh wait--no it wasn't, it was tied in her other shoelace. Whew.

Then she gasped again. It was her house key nestled into the laces of her left shoe, not her car key! We looked around the Riverwoods for a phone, but none of the stores were open, it was too early. We thought about running back to the temple...but quickly kai-boshed that idea. We would rather hitch back. We walked a little bit on the Provo canyon trail and ran into two maintenance workers. They graciously let us use their phone, chuckling at our situation. But then we realized we didn't know any of our roommate's phone numbers! (Remember the days when we used to memorize phone numbers?) Dani called her mom who called her brother who got the phone number of the girl across the hall from us, Lene.

Half an hour later, our rescue party arrived. We were pretty much frozen by then. But overall, a good run! I'm a little bit sore from it today!

(Since I don't have a running watch, I'm stealing this stats from Dani's running blog.)

Time: 42:45

Distance: 3.43 miles

Pace: 12.27 min (remember all those hills...they slowed us down)

[Made obvious by the title of this blog]

I am not a runner.

I come from a family of non-runners. Historically, I have hating running. As per the traditional youth experience, I dreaded running the mile in gym class. I would run for 100 yards and then walk for 100 more. As a result, I never ran a full mile (without walking) until the summer after my sophomore year of college. Seriously.

But now, in the "prime" of my college-life years, I run. It would be overstating it if I said I enjoyed every second of running--I don't. I especially dislike the first mile of every run.

But at Joe Kelly, author of "53 runner's commandments" noted,

53. Running is always enjoyable. Sometimes, though, the joy doesn’t come until the end of the run.

Amen.

The purpose of this blog is to track my progress and keep myself accountable for training. (It might make me run a bit faster if I realize my 12-minute miles are going to be published for all the world to see.) I will pretend like people read it, but I don't expect anyone to really read except for me (and my dad).



P.S. Thanks to my effervescent roommate Dani for suggesting a running blog! LOVE. IT.