Running Moms member Angela Stewart Stauch was inspired to write a play-by-play of this week's Wednesday workout (and our toughest hill workout), the famous Seven Sisters. Read on to see why this wasn't an ordinary run.
Thank you so much, Angela!
On Wednesday night Mother Nature tried her best to convince us to stay home, put our feet up, and indulge in a glass of wine or two by sending a storm our way. Running Moms are tenacious though, and if the morning group managed to conquer the Seven Sisters with toddlers and strollers (sounds like a good show for TLC), the evening group could not justify letting a little rain, wind and hail keep us from our run.
So our merry group set out, and by merry I mean grumbling, whining and aching, eager to get to that first hill so we could start counting our accomplishments one hill at a time. The rain was light and wind just background noise as we pushed ourselves up the first two hills and for a moment I thought “Hey, maybe I’m not going to die and have my remains chewed on by vultures during this run.” But then we found ourselves at the bottom of Gonzales, which is daunting in itself but even more so when the running group that you passed on your way to the bottom of the hill is now standing at the top watching and cheering you on. We certainly felt the pressure to run all the way to the top of the hill with our supporters watching, however, I think there was equal pressure to not throw up in front of our new running friends.
Having to push ourselves up to the top of that hill seemed to set the tone for the next two hills, and I have to say the only thing that seemed to get me to the top of those hills was the belief that if I stopped Christy was going to start barking at me like Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, “Walking?! There’s no walking up hills!”
Lotbiniere almost did me in and I swear I heard a very vocal squirrel warning me to not even attempt this hill, however, upon further reflection I was probably just experiencing exercise-induced psychosis (I just made that up but from now on it’s going to be my excuse for everything because it just sounds cool). By the time I arrived at the top of Lotbiniere, I was again reminded of my early premonition that I might just have to be left for dead during the course of this run, but lucky for me the motto of Running Moms seems to be that no one will be left behind (even if you cry and beg to just be left in a ditch they won’t leave you and I know because I’ve tried this ploy to get out of a run early). All I can say is that Lotbiniere is a BITCH and thankfully I was running with some amazing, strong women who showed me that it can be finished.
As we ran onwards, I realized my memories of Robleda were pretty fuzzy, most likely because by this point in the Seven Sisters runs I am focusing on getting one foot in front of the other and just not collapsing, and so I dreaded what knew was coming next, more pain. It turns out that this was my favorite hill of the run! We were greeted by a fire truck and a huge Garry Oak tree that had been taken down by the wind (makes you really respect what we were accomplishing out there if huge trees were being knocked over!). I know in my heart that we would have just run under that huge tree and past the sparking wires in order to run that hill if the firemen hadn’t physically held us back and forced us to move on with the threat of calling the police if we didn’t retreat. That’s just how dedicated we are to our Seven Sisters run.
On the last leg of the run, the downhill-we’re-almost-there-the-end-is-in-sight part of the run that always brings a little pep back into my step, Mother Nature decided to throw one more thing at us…hail. Thankfully we were almost back at the store by this point so we just relished in the thought that we had one more running bragging right. Now that we have proven that a little spring storm in Victoria can’t keep us from running, I think it’s time to challenge ourselves a little more. Anyone up for trip to the Maritimes? I hear they are expecting a blizzard this weekend…
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