Red Bridge

I set out for a fairly long mid week run early this morning. I ran 6 miles. I did the old Red Bridge loop from my high school days. It includes the crazy hill on the Schoeneck route, plus another couple miles of ascending and descending.

The one nice thing about the huge hill is that it's in the beginning of the run. You get about a half mile to warm and then boom you hit it. That means you aren't tired. You'd think the hill would be a problem, but I've always found it relatively easy. The only exceptions have been when I've run it during extreme heat or high winds. I guess I'm just made to run hills. Even though I don't run them much anymore, they still don't give me a lot of trouble.

One of the funnier things along the route occurred early on. Before I ran up the hill, I noticed one of those portable speed detectors. I decided to run in the middle of the road, but it wouldn't register a speed for me. I guess it doesn't go that low.

The top of the hill was a bit windy. That's all that really bothered me from the hill. After that, I encountered a lot of bright sunlight right in my face. I couldn't even see the cars for a couple moments. Luckily, that went away pretty quickly.

After getting to the top of the hill, it's relatively flat for about half a mile. Then there's a crazy downhill section. I usually like to cruise downhill and let gravity do all the work. At the steepest part, I actually had to slow myself down though.

After that was the hard part. It's another big uphill section. The difference between this one and the first one is that this one is longer and not as steep. I really sputtered up this hill and appreciated how much the first hill had actually taken out of me. I had very dead legs. I think some birds above sensed it to because they started making noise. They were probably circling too.

I eventually made it up the hill. As they say, what goes up must come down. That's the case here as a long downhill follows. That allowed for me to relax and recover. It's amazing how much you can recover with some downhill sections, provided you don't go too fast.

Following that, I pushed it through the final stretch around the high school. That included a short but steep uphill section. I finished right in front of the school as many of the students were walking to class. All in all, it was a good run.

I've really been eager to do some other stuff. Since I was feeling good this evening, I decided to run some sprints on the soccer field at my old elementary school. I sprinted the length of the field, concentrating on form. I then walked back as my recovery. Initially, I planned on 10 of these. That didn't do too much though so I extended it to 15. I did run two of them barefoot and the rough surface actually made my foot hurt. I won't do that again.

I'll throw some ice on my foot and hopefully it'll be fine come tomorrow. Tomorrow will probably be an easy day. I think I'm going to run the Blue Eagle 5K loop again. Then I'm headed back to my apartment.

6 miles - 51:38 (8:36 pace)