The hills are alive with the sound of me gasping for air...

I got a nice seven miler in yesterday and I must say that I am always happy to be back here in the hilly upstate. I enjoy a flat run every now and then, but a few days of them is all I can take. Flat runs seem to come with steep crowns on the road and that spells ITBS for me. Fortunately, this year I was in better shape and the traffic was down enough that I could spend some time in the middle of the road. Last summer at the beach, my ITBS flared up big time. When I catch low tide and can run on the flat part of the beach it is pretty good. I usually like to run first thing in the morning when I am on vacation though, so if the tide is up I am out of luck.

I also ran on a bike trail a couple of times during this trip. It is paved and flat (no crown). However, what seems like a fairly straight path on a bike, weaves back and forth with every step on a run. That got old quick as I was never able to get settled into a consistent pace. There is a power transmission line right of way that I should have run on. It was not grown up for the summer yet and would have been a nice straight trail run. I regret not giving it a try.

One other interesting sidenote.... At the Cooper River Bridge Run, there was a group of guys running in skirts... I'm not quite there yet myself, I hope I don't get there either! You can see a few of them in this picture. I made my wife take it because I didn't want to be seen staring at them.......