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And let me tell you, it sucked! There were a total of about 7 - 8 hills with the largest two being at the beginning. I’m not good with hills from the get go. I feel like I have to warm up and then hit some hills, so I’m sure that standing around in front of Cumberland Mall on the uneven road waiting for our start time to come up did not help me at all.

There were very few of us who where not skating this to win. How could I tell, you ask? Well, it has a lot to do with the fact that most of the skaters were on 5 wheels or had race gear. Not to mention, all of us who just wanted to finish were not part of the gaggle at the start line.

Anyhow, the hills are crazy. Deb and Paul told us that these are the type of hills we will encounter on the A2A, just less intense and more spread out. I’m having second thoughts as to whether or not I can even finish this, especially since the time is coming so close and we have yet to do a skate longer than 26 miles. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

That really sucks. We thought we’d get out of church on time to make it, but by the time we got there, we would have had to turn around and return. So we didn’t go. We also didn’t go skating to finish up the mileage from yesterday. We only got 10 miles in from the escapade, but the top of Jason’s foot was hurting today and it was downpouring, so we just gave up on skating. Tomorrow we have an easy pace skate. I’m sure we will ignore that and just head to Central Park again and skate the hills. The more practice we get in, the better we will be when we hit Ansley Park again. I don’t want to be the last person in the pack next time. I’m sure that won’t be the case, but I can dream, can’t I?

We had a Group Training Session today. We were suppose to skate 40 miles, but since we were having a picnic afterwards, we were told we would skate a shorter distance today…only 25 miles. Had this been the Greenway, I would have said no problem. But we skated two laps around Piedmont Park, and then proceeded to Ansley, a subdivision right across the street from the park. We had no idea what was in store for us.

This place was like hill central. We’d come off of one hill just to go up another one. One lap, 3 miles, was horrible. I wanted to quit. There’s a downhill on the track where the road is so awful that our feet feel like they are still vibrating from the unevenness of the road 5 minutes later. I couldn’t keep up with the group. At the second loop, it was obvious that Jason and I were not keeping up with the group the way we should have been. I always feel like I’m bringing up the rear. Anyhow, one of our coaches decided it was time to split the group. Jason, a mentor, and I would stay with one coach and do one more lap, while the other coach would take the faster group and do two more laps.

I found it so hard to go up those hills the second time. My legs were already feeling like jello and I felt so dissappointed in myself. I ended up crying going up one of the hills, but luckily, I had dark sunglasses on, so Jason nor the coach actually saw that I was crying. I want to be a better skater. I expected to be a better skater, but here was the truth staring me in the face. I was the slowest skater of the group, the one with the least ability to climb hills, and (not that anyone said it) the one least likely to finish the race. There. I said it. And I hate that. So, come Monday, I’m back to doing the schedule Nazi routine. We do everything by the schedule (just with mileage somewhat inbetween the 52 and the 38 miler goals.) And I go back to watching my food intake. Drinking all my water. Eating more vegetables. Taking my vitamins. I don’t have time to play around anymore. I can’t afford not to train and give it my all.