Wicked Scenic Boston Run with Killah Hill

I did it!  All 5 miles!  And I didn't overheat!  What a surreal feeling that was.

So the route was: Charles River --> Esplanade --> Cambridge Street (*not* Beacon Street, as I said yesterday, but it was in Beacon Hill) --> Tremont Avenue --> Boston Common.  Some of you have requested pictures, so here's one from around the Esplanade:

Not bad, scenery-wise.  Boston Common was fun too.  There were kids at a tennis camp and I even got to run around the Frog Pond.  This picture shows just about where my run ended.  However, the Frog Pond was closed, so it wasn't quite so active:

The Killah Hill was...well...not so fun.  My run tracker is amusing since it tracks both your pace and your altitude.  Funnily enough, my pace went down quite a bit when the altitude started to go up!

This run was fun for another reason (apart from not overheating and getting through the 5 miles).  When I first started running, I lived in Somerville, MA.  I started -- like most people -- with smaller distances and shorter runs.  Then one day I decided that I was ready to tackle what I considered to be a 'real run': my first 6 miles.  I don't know why I felt this distance made you officially a runner, but it was the marker that I chose and I set out.  I went from Somerville to Cambridge (which might sound impressive but at the time was actually across the street), down to the river, ran for a while, then came up back to my house.  This was also the run that I realized we lived up a steep yet gradual hill, one that I really hadn't noticed walking.  But I did it.  The last part of it was pretty brutal, but I made it and that's all that matters.

It was amazing to me when I considered the difference between suburban Florida and Boston in terms of space.  From my hotel to the Esplanade was about 2.5 miles.  In that time, I covered several neighborhoods, ran past the MIT and Boston University campuses, and went by three red line subway stations -- the red line stations are actual normal distances, unlike the green line, which is essentially a tram.  In Florida, I could probably still be running around the same subdivision after 2.5 miles.

What I also realized as I was heading home was that unless I change my schedule, this was my last 5 mile run in Boston during this trip.  Time certainly does fly...