Consecutive Hills of Death

Today we did the infamous GWB run (for those unfamiliar, the GWB is the George Washington Bridge). It's sort of a misnomer, since the bridge is only the first mile of the run, and then it's down into Palisades Park, NJ, for a crazy hilly run. During my San Diego season, this run was one of the highlights, no doubt. I met my running partner, Audrey, and we conquered the crap out of those hills, including the half mile almost-straight-vertical incline on the way back up to the bridge. We felt like we could move mountains.

Today, I did not feel like that. Today, I felt like shit. I knew it would be a tough run - as with our San Diego season, Michael announced that this would be the hilliest run we'd do all season. I'd been through those hills before, I knew what to expect: I knew there were some bad ones and some rolling ones and some that seemingly never end. It wasn't the hills themselves that made today a crap run. I can't explain it, but for some reason the entire second half of the run I felt really dizzy. My nutrition and hydration were dead on, I didn't go out last night, I slept fine, I ate a good breakfast - like I said, I can't explain it. Then when we finished I laid down and put my legs up (to get my legs higher than my heart) and I got absolutely freezing. The weird thing is, it was actually really warm today - sunny and mid 60s - so I had no reason to be that cold. At that point I guess my lips had turned blue, but not being able to see my own face, I didn't realize that was happening. I don't know why this happened. I changed in Michael's car into some dry clothes, which helped, and I had a little food shortly thereafter which I'm assuming helped too, but my lips stayed slightly blue for a couple hours and I was still pretty cold most of the day. Not ideal.

I feel fine now, so I think everything is okay. No one had a particularly great run today, due to the brutal elevation changes - Steph and Olya actually referred to them as the consecutive hills of death. Next weekend my long run will be the Philly half marathon, where there will be NO hills and it should be a GREAT run :)