The Rancho Conquerers

Day #1 of a 3-day weekend and how do I decide to kick it off? With a run, naturally :). And not just any run; I decided to be ambitious and set out to tackle the mighty Rancho San Antonio, with its rolling hills and its often uneven terrain. I'd only ever had good experiences on Rancho despite all of these things, however, so I thought nothing of it to suggest it to my game running partner, Janine.

It soon became clear that this particular run wasn't going to be quite so fun. Within minutes, I was struggling--I was out of breath and choking on my heart (because somehow it slid up into my throat!) and wanting to walk every single hill there was. I wanted to quit so many times and turn around, but kept on soldiering on so I wouldn't let Janine down.

Walk/run intervals, walking up hills, taking stretching breaks when needed--the first half of the run was all about trying to acclimate to the suddenly hostile terrain (and my suddenly hostile stamina).

But then something magical happened. The run turned... INCREDIBLE! No, really. It turned INCREDIBLE.

Still not sure exactly what happened--perhaps it was taking it a little easier on the first half (thank you, sluggishness), but something switched on for both me and Janine, and we practically flew back to our starting point, not stopping to walk until we were just a few feet from our destination. That's about 2.75 miles of nonstop running--downhill, uphill, flat trail, it didn't matter, we were both feeling so good that we kept on running. And running. And running. So this is how Forrest Gump must have felt!

I owe a debt of gratitude to Janine, who didn't let me give up when I wanted to. On the way back, I wanted to stop at one point, but she urged me to keep going and fight through it. I did. It worked. I'm SO GLAD I kept on going.

Thank you, J9 for the push! It ended in a fantastic run :).