So it's monday, and naturally I am usually slower on mondays, so I was bracing myself for a hard workout the entire day, which probably didn't help one bit. We did our avenue hill run. We went over to this park that was right below the start of the hills. We did strides. Except these strides weren't our normal flat strides. No, they had a hill in them that looked like a wall from the start, and they were extra long. Well, I wasn't feeling too great when we started the run, and by the time we got to the park I was starting to have a hard time breathing. I was having a hard time placing why this was, but I just tried to push through it. I did a few, and by then I was breathing really hard, and it was hard to get enough air in. I stopped for a few to try to get it back down and closer to normal, then finished to get 8 strides instead of 10. My breathing had calmed down when we were getting drinks at the drinking fountain, and so I was okay for the first couple hill strides. I wasn't doing as well as I might've, but it was okay considering. I was able to hang on to Sarah on the hill, and then I'd fall off as it got harder to breathe. But I was able (for those first few) to start the next one with the group. Then I fell off as the hills got steeper, and breathing got harder. Often times I would have to go super slow on the recovery to get my breathing down, and, I know you're not supposed to, but I walked one of them. When I got to 11th it was a miracle because the hills just kept on coming and it went on forever! But I knew there were only 10 of them. Then I did the shriner's run back, stopping at the drinking fountain for a little bit. Just normal running was okay and I could breathe fairly well, at least at the pace I was going, which was slow. Then I got to the track and looked at the mountains, and realized why I had been having such a hard time breathing. It was so smoky you couldn't see some of the distant ones!! Stupid fires. | 