Where did I go? Pittsburgh!

It's been a few days since I last posted, but don't worry.  All is well.  The running is still on schedule.  Saturday I did my 5 miles which was supposed to include 8 minutes of hill time.  Yeah, I got that and then some. In case you have never been to the lovely city of Pittsburgh, let me warn  you in advance: it is hilly.  Like, crazy hilly.  Especially when you get off-track and wind up adding a bunch of hill to your run accidentally.  All hills aside, though, it was an extremely pleasant run, when all was said and done, even if a bunch of stuff went wrong along the way.

My plan was to run in Schenley Park, near where I was staying.  The directions were relatively simple: take a right, then take a left, then turn and cross the bridge, then I would be there.  Except that I am directionally challenged a lot of the time.  In this case, I completely missed the bridge.  Adding to the fun was the fact that I had my phone, I started the running app, but forgot to completely turn it on, so I ran probably a good half mile before figuring this out (at least I guesstimated it at about half a mile).  Then I wound up taking a straight downhill path for a bit in the wrong direction, which naturally required a straight uphill to get turned around again.  I think that I probably ran enough hills to make up for all of the slacker Florida hills that I've done so far during training.

Once I actually found the park, though, it was quite pleasant.  There were trails with foliage.  Not Florida foliage.  Actual, honest-to-goodness foliage, with leaves of different colors -- even if they were fringing on past peak.  And I got to run right next to them on a lovely trail.  Plus the weather was great, in the mid-50s....and this was around noon!  Noon!  Can you imagine?  Because it gets hard to imagine being able to run at noon when you live in Florida for a while.

I did slack off a bit at the end and after completing my guesstimated 5 miles (4.5 miles, allowing for the 'Oops, I forgot to turn on the app' error), walked the remainder.  The hills were just....ack.  There is no other word.  If nothing else, running in Pittsburgh gave me an entirely new appreciation for the term, 'Killah hill.'  I just mapped the basic route on Map My Run and discovered that I covered about 450 feet over the course of a 5-mile run.  For reference, the highest point in all of Florida is only 345 feet above sea level and it is nowhere near where I live.