Let us accept the inner life, the spiritual life. Mistakes in our journey are inevitable. Success without endeavour is impossibility itself. No work, no progress. Experience we must welcome, for we can learn nothing without experience. The experience may be either encouraging or discouraging. But it is experience that makes us a real being, that shows us the true meaning of our very existence.
- Sri Chinmoy
i spent a lot of time running this weekend...7 hours and 15 minutes to be exact. on saturday morning i went out intending to do a 3 hour run, but got out and decided i needed to run to the top of the hill of life, so i kept going. as i'm running up the hill of life i start wondering if i'll have some sort of epiphany when i get to the top (and suspecting that it might induced by lack of oxygen, but i digress). afterall, the name of the hill implies that meaning might be found on it.
well, i reached the top and found myself thinking, oh my gosh, i'm ALIVE!...and out of breath and ready for a gel. at this point, i see the 5 happy trail runners sitting on a bench, refilling their water bottles. nope, they weren't an illusion. turns out they're members of hill country trail runners as well, and they invite me to run with them for a bit. this worked out quite nicely because we went on some new (for me) trails and got to see a pretty amazing view of the area west of 360. the rest of the run was enjoyable and uneventful. the sun felt strong, but at least there was good shade on the trails.
lesson learned from the hill of life this time: good company helps pick up your spirits (and your pace) when you're tired.
saturday night i helped set up the finish line for "the loop," a race being held on the motocross trails in emma long park. in retrospect, i probably should have tried racing that race sunday morning, but my legs were still a little dead. so i went out on a slow 3 hour run by myself. ah, the joys of back to back long runs. ironically, the runs this weekend actually made my legs feel better. i need to look into the physiology of this.
and the last exciting thing that happened this weekend was moving. yep, i am now officially on my two month "vacation in austin." i am living in hyde park for the next two months with some friends from the ride last summer and then will move back into my co-op in august. tonight after core workout, i will get to experience grocery shopping for myself for the first time in almost 2 years (the co-op shops for us and last summer, i was shopping to feed 20-40 people). i'm a little nervous.
2 comments:
What and where is this "hill of life"? I feel like I want to find it... by car though, not 7 hour run.
the camp craft entrance to the barton creek greenbelt is the top of the hill of life. this hill is < 0.5 miles long but gains 100 ft elevation every 1/10th of a mile so the grade is pretty good, and the hill is covered in crumbling limestone...which means i wouldn't recommend running it if you have ankle issues! and don't worry, it only takes about 2 hours of running (rather slowly) to reach the top from my house and the 7 hours were spread out over two days :)
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