I played soccer in both high school and college. I was in pretty good shape at the time. And my high school and college were about a mile apart.  There was one thing that we all dreaded more than any other conditioning drill. Running hills. And since my high school and college were so close, we ran the same stupid hill for both.

For today’s challenge, I decided to go for something that would be incredibly physically taxing. I had not run hills since college (for obvious reasons – who in their right mind would choose to run hills without a coach telling them that they had to?!?). In high school and college we had to sprint three hills, so today I was going to run three hills. The hill is about a quarter mile long and just keeps getting steeper as you go. It really doesn’t look that bad… but holy moly that hill sucks to run.

Ann came out there with me to take a picture for the blog, and boy am I glad that she did. The hills were just as hard as I remember them being… 20 years ago when I was in shape. Now, that I’m not really in shape… it was hard… and SLOW. But I made it. I ran all three hills without stopping or walking. Of course, calling what I was doing running is generous, but I definitely was not walking.

But here is what I took away from this one. I was really, really glad to have Ann there with me. It was drizzling a bit this morning, so I asked her to take a picture on my first run and then said she could wait in the car from there. But, because she is an awesome wife, she stayed out the whole time and actually shouted encouragement at me the whole time that I was running. I needed that encouragement. If I had gone to run the hill on my own, I don’t know if I would have been able to make it – and I definitely would not have run as hard. But with Ann’s encouragement, I was able to finish and finish pretty well. Of course it was slow, but I ran as hard as I could and I was completely exhausted. Mission accomplished.