FIRE HYDRANT HELL

Like I said in my last post, I was off to go run with this girl.

Return of Pigeon!!

Pigeon is training for the Tahoe Rim Trail 50 Miler in July and she needed hill training today. When she emailed me about it I said "Come on over! El Dorado Hills is nothing BUT hills." She arrived at noon, just as the heat was pumping.

We left my house and ran around the block to connect with the fire road trail that leads to Beatty Drive. Pigeon took one look at the hill and was like "you want to climb that entire hill?" I told her it was up to her what portion she wanted to do but that it was typically a mile from stop sign to stop sign on this hill.

She quickly pinpointed two fire hydrants and said "let's run fire hydrant to fire hydrant." I was down with that and once we approached the first fire hydrant we realized that was too short and that there was another one just up a ways and decided THAT was our distance. Fire Hydrant to fire hydrant became our mental motto.

Beatty Drive is unforgiving

but it can give you a great workout

It was pretty hot out but we parked our water bottles at the bottom fire hydrant and just motored up down, up, down up, down. We did five hill repeats with 30 seconds of rest.

Going up

After our five Pigeon suggested that we sprint to the first shorter fire hydrant as fast as we can, touch it and then turn around and fly as fast as we possibly can down the hill without slowing down when we approached the finishing hydrant.

I will admit the first sprint up sprint down almost had me losing my breakfast. I was huffing and puffing. She suggested one more and something clicked, I felt better and stronger and the second one was much easier.

We then decided to just run all the way to the top of Beatty and meander through the streets until we added more mileage and made it back to my house. 6.5 miles for the day.

At the top with Folsom Lake behind us

Once back at my house we headed straight to my pool to soak our knees and ankles. My ankle was fine until those sprints and I think it was the down that aggravated it the most which then caused running up the hill to be a problem too. The pool felt great.

After Pigeon left I quickly showered and stuffed my face and headed out to the El Dorado Hills CSD (Community Services District) because Blood Source was having blood drive.

For as long as I can remember Jersey Dad was a blood donor. As a kid I watched him donate and always wanted to donate myself and I did, all through high school. In college I stopped but when I moved out to Sacramento and connected with Jersey Girl we started donating together and then we started donating platelets.

Then the string of kids happened and (ahem) tattoos which created a break in our donation schedule. Back in March I saw a sign at the CSD for one of their blood donations and stopped in to donate. They said they come back about every other month or so and today was the day.

I can't express the feeling I get when I donate. My dad has had people approach him and thank him for either giving blood or for donating platelets as it some how either saved their lives or a loved ones. I would like to go back to donating platelets but it typically requires more of a time commitment which I truly should look into now that I do have some extra time on my hands. I have learned my lesson though about donating blood and then trying to run the next day. When they say "rest for 72 hours" they really mean it (although I typically only rest for about 48, ssshhh).

Tomorrow is going to be an exciting day for the Peanut and Squeaker. I have a surprise for them and Jersey Dad is coming along too. If my master plan works ... then a double nap time should occur giving us some quiet time.

peek-a-boo with the foam roller