The Search Continues

June got off to a good, if a bit tough, start. I had little trouble getting out of bed this morning, which was surprising since I woke up at 3am and couldn't get back to sleep for at least an hour. But when my alarm went off at 5:20 I didn't do the usual lying around for fifteen minutes before finally getting up.

The run was another experiment in searching out some hills. I know I have to incorporate them into my runs, but given that for most of the past three years I was just happy to be running I generally found that running on relatively flat ground was challenging enough. The occasional hill here and there would come up, of course, but I really didn't try to seek them out except when I ran a few long run loops that took me down into and then up out of the Don Valley two or three times. Even then I'd only hit one big hill two or three times, that's it.

Anyway, Toronto is not blessed with any mountains or anything, but ravines do cut across the city all over the place. As a result there are some hilly parts that make for good rolling terrain and it's these types of neighbourhoods that I am looking for within running distance of my house. A place known as "The Beaches" is one such place and that's where I ran this morning.

When running to The Beaches in the past I'd head for the boardwalk and then retrace my steps, thereby only running up the one hill I had to run down on my way to the shoreline. Today was different because once I reached the end of the boardwalk I didn't just turn around. Instead, I headed north up one hill, cut across Queen Street for a bit, then went north again up another hill, ran down a hill along Kingston Road, and then hit a couple more hills on the way up Woodbine Avenue. These are not mountains or anything, as mentioned above, but they did provide a good test and made my 15km run quite tough (5:01/km, 8:04/mile average pace).

The elevation profile was decent. I think there are more challenging hills to be had in The Beaches. I'm just not ready for them yet.