This morning I decided to take on the HILL that leads up the Jardim Botanico (Botanical Gardens) here in Brasilia. It's a capital HILL because it goes straight up for two miles with no real breaks. It's gradual but awful. I swear sometimes my ears pop when we're driving up it.
When we first moved to Brasilia I said to Matt, "I want to run this hill before we leave. It will be tough but I think I can do it." I then suggested that he could drive me to the bottom and pick me up at the top. But now in my marathon beast mode, I took it on as part of an 8 mile run. That's right, I ran to the bottom of the hill (2.1 miles), then ran up the hill (another 2), then ran back down and ran home for a grand total of 8.2 miles.
It was definitely a struggle going up and my pace was approaching snail speeds but I tried to keep my head up and think about pumping my arms, keeping my shoulders down and smiling.
When I got to the top and turned around to head home, I could see the city and the lake and it was spectacular! Definitely a nice reward for all that hard work.
Then I really enjoyed flying down the hill even though I knew my quads would hate me later. And I was thinking about how this would be a great hill to train on for Boston. How when (not if) I qualify for Boston 2014, Brasilia is going to be the perfect place to get ready because it has so many hills and I can recreate the joys of Heartbreak Hill right here! (According to google translate that would be Desgosto Colina in Portuguese.) So I'm feeling motivated and getting pumped for using this Rio Marathon to qualify and put my Brasilia hill training to the test in Boston in 2014!
And that is how an ordinary Tuesday run was transformed into a motivation building, confidence boosting, bucket list checking, hill crushing VICTORY.
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