I think I can...I think I can...I think I can...

Joy here...Watty Piper's classic child's story "The Little Engine That Could" tells the tale of the little engine who tries hard and makes it up the hill, even though he thinks he can't do it. Well, after taking a rest day yesterday (Monday), today's workout is scheduled as a dreaded hill workout. I can tell you that even on the 20 minute easy run towards the local hill, I was already preparing myself with that little engine's mantra - "I think I can, I think I can..." - especially seeing as how last week's hill workout nearly killed me. I mean, until today I've only done two hill workouts, one with 5 repeats and one with 6 repeats. My husband (or The Man as Nomi has named hers, and mine would be very excited to see he warrants a definite article and capitalization, but I digress...) is already up to 8 repeats, and so I knew that I would have to up my game in order to catch up with him. So for the entire run this morning on the way to the hill, I was having a serious psychological battle with myself. We finally reached the hill (after doing our strides on the grassy stretch before the hill, and after last night's rain, that grassy patch was pretty wet, and I was sure that I would wipe out, landing on my @$$ before even getting to the hill), and we started our first hill repeat. When I do these hill repeats, I try to count to 30 with my breathing and run hard up that hill each time as a way of trying to make sure that I keep my hill repeats pretty consistent with respect to speed. That way I know that if I reach the top at count 40, I'm about 10 seconds off, and so I try to keep all my repeats at around 28-30 slow seconds. I chase up behind The Man, breathing and running in time to my own counting, and then reward myself with a chug of water once I reach the top (while The Man has already started to turn around and ready himself for the slow return to the bottom of the hill). Okay, so this morning, we start running up the hill - him first, me following - and repeat this over and over again. And the strangest thing starts happening...while I'm counting in my head and repeating that little engine's mantra as I follow The Man, I realize that with each successive repeat, the distance between him and me is less and less. I also realize that when we reach the top of the hill, he's breathing heavy and looks pretty dead, and I just carry on the conversation that we paused at the bottom of the hill. Then, after hill repeat #7 (one more than last week!!!), I'm feeling pretty strong, so I join The Man on hill repeat #8 and am right on his heels until the last bit of the hill where it kicks up steeply and he pulls ahead of me. We finish that repeat, give each other a high five, and then carry on with our run home. And as we're running home, it dawns on me that I feel pretty good, strong, easy, and I'm ready to start our strides long before he is!

Now I know that it's starting to sound like I'm really competitive with him or something, which I'm not, but I only started running a few years ago when he and I started dating, and so I've used him as my running gauge since the beginning of my journey into learning how to be a runner. For me, then, being able to run with him and even not die in comparison is a real triumph.

All this means that Sunday's run was good, and now Tuesday's run was good...dare I even hope that Wednesday's run will be good?