Mountain Growth

 Easy does not change us; tough is where growth happens. Yesterday I grew by leaps and bounds, literally. In retrospect, the Northface EnduranceChallenge half marathon at Blue Mountain, in Collingwood may have been ambitious for my first exposure to off road running. It was the kind of race that experienced trail runners called challenging. I called it just plain hard.

With the completion of hard things comes a sense of pride. The harder something is that you stick through; the feeling of pride is multiplied exponentially. I headed out for the hardest run of my life to endure all that the Collingwood mountain terrain could throw at me. What I didn't know was that the landscape would get thrown in front of me again and again and again. The triumph of any given climb was short lived as another was waiting around the corner or on the other side of the forest.