
The hill training was not as bad as I thought it might be. For those of you in Tucson or familiar with Tucson, we ran along the Rillito River Park from Children's Memorial Park (where we meet every Saturday morning) to First Ave. From there, we ran up the east side of First Ave, past River Rd to Via Entrada. Via Entrada is about halfway between River and Orange Grove with pretty much a steady uphill. I told myself that I wanted to run the whole distance of the uphill to Via Entrada. Other than having to deal with concrete and running a bit in the bike lane, I made it up the hill without any issues!!
At the top of the hill, I was met by Coach Ashley, who directly us where to go. For the next mile & a half, we ran through through the hilly neighborhood on Via Entrada. Gorgeous neighborhood, I wish I had the money to afford a place along there! I am including the graph from the data my Garmin watch picked up. The blue line is my pace & the green line is elevation. You can see that much of the first half of the 10-mile run was the hill training portion.


Dan got to practice his Spanglish. We had a number of pick-up trucks with Sonoran license plates stop. Luckily, I can understand some basic Spanish & I know 1-10! But Dan did most of the negotiating in Spanish. Thank you 7 months of working in Eloy and 2 years of high school Spanish!
Earlier this evening, I met a few people from Team In Training for optional hill training at Tumamoc Hill. Some of the more adventurous people actually run up to the top but I am more than OK with walking to the top & running down. Running down the steep inclines definitely works my muscles in a new way! I included my Garmin graph from a couple weeks ago. You can see the change in elevation over the course of a little over a mile!

Also during the week last week, Dan, the cats & I had a bit of excitement. Rory (our little 6-pound cat) tracked a VERY large bug from the hallway to the living room. It actually flew & Dan though it might be a bird. No, it was just the hugest bug I have ever seen in our house. Below is a picture of Rory trying to get it after it landed on our speaker. Sitting above it (not in this pic) are our Wii-motes and the bug is almost as big as one of them. I would say the bug was between 6 & 8 inches! Dan & I both looked it up online and it is a Palo Verde Beetle. It actually snapped & hissed at Dan & Rory. I was a huge girl & sat on the couch, praying that Dan would take care of it (and I snapped the picture).
