What's it gonna be?

"You keep looking at that hill."

Now, this isn't a training log per se. Besides, let's be honest. Do you really care how much I can sweat on the stair stepper doing 100 floors (If you've seen the movie "The Rocker" you'll get the idea) or what my weekly mileage is? There are a few of you that would be glad to graph that or set up a multi-tab spreadsheet for me, but I digress.

More of my intention is to document the memorable things that occur on the way. Just so happens that today's training run was one such thing.

My good buddy Bill Colbert offered to hit a 10 mile loop around Lake Cunningham with me this afternoon. 28-30 degrees, low wind and mostly snow packed trail. That'll work just fine. Friend Bill turned into coach Bill as he kept me moving well, encouraged my efforts up the hills and knew to back off enough to give me some recovery. Either that or when he didn't see me in the rearview he thought maybe he should let up a squeak. My reward for giving it a good effort? A secret hill that I hadn't been up before. Thanks "buddy". After about 7.5 miles we came to a split where you could take a pretty flat low trail or go up a climb and across a berm before dropping back down. We stopped for a second to get a drink and tighten up my laces, but I must have been contemplating which way to go as Bill says "You keep looking at that hill." I told him I couldn't get better without doing them and we start to trot up the climb. Here's another reason friends are awesome. They're going to let you know when it's smarter to just put your head down instead of getting cocky. I try to turn it on as much as a little fat boy can and beach bully Bill responds by kicking sand in my face and crushing me up the hill. Note for later - Send 25 cents to Charles Atlas for the hill running course.

The rest of the run was just two dudes out on tour, but Bill gave me my training mantra for the duration as we topped that hill. As I wheezed up to the top he laughs and says:

"You wanna do it the easy way, or the Western States way?"

Amen brother.