This hill will not defeat me

To be honest, I am getting kind of bored with my regular running trails. So today I took another direction ready for a long-ish run. The thing is, when I run new places there is so much to see and so many decisions to make (at the crossroads) that I feel like I ran much more than I actually did. I was kind of surprised that it took me only 4 km to be back at the "old" trails.

There is this one hill that I dread on km 6. It is short but very very steep. I have trouble walking it, especially in autumn weather when it is all muddy and slippery. I call it "the killer". It always throws me off my pace, and makes my heart rate go nuts. It pretty much kills my run for next 1-2 km. On my previous run, I applied my newly found mantra "this hill will not defeat me". And guess what ... I ran it all the way up just to find out that the trail gives you some 10 meters of slight descent that allows you to catch your breath and immediately goes upwards again. This time not so steep but long enough to kill the rest of your spirit (and the trail turns so you don't even see the end of it). How come I have never noticed that before? Yeah, I know, because I used to walk that part. Well, today I was ready for the fight. My thights were burning, feet heavy as stuck in concrete and heart rate all the way up to 192, but I did it. For the first time, I was the winner of this battle.

At the end, it was spectacular 10,56 km.

Somehow this was not the end of my day. I subscribed to go for a walk / hike with a few other people and because it was supposed to be short I had the bright idea of breaking in my winter hiking shoes before I set off for a whole day 20-25 km track in them. They are so f...ing heavy! Especially compared to the running shoes. I was pretty much exhausted when I came to the meeting point. It took me another one km to accept the fact, get used to it and start thinking about other things than those heavy shoes. Which brings me to the queston ... is hiking a good cross training for runners? I really wonder.

Well, I ended up falling asleep at the sofa at 8:30 p.m. That's how tired I got. And all this in a totally shitty weather - such a fog that you could not see 50 meters ahead.