Thursday I went out to hike the Y. Of course, this isn’t my first time hiking the Y. I think perhaps it is the 4th or 5th time this summer. Last time, I hiked it in 29 minutes, which was really difficult and at the time I didn’t think there was any way that I could make it in less that 30 minutes, but I did. This time, I was a little more confident after hiking Kings Mountain in Oregon last week, so I set a goal for 15 minutes.

I set my stopwatch, and decided to only take my one liter water bottle. I started at about noon, and the temperature was about 80 degrees. I hiked solid, only stopping for a few seconds at a time to swallow some water. With the stopwatch as a constant reminder to my 25 minute goal, I kept up a solid pace, and if anything, increased my pace over the duration of the hike. I reached the Y at the zeroth second of the 25 minute of my hike, with about half a liter consumed out of my bottle. I was pretty tired when I reached the top. My heart was going pretty fast and I definitely needed the 10 minute rest once I got up there. The hike back down lasted just about as long as the hike up, mostly because I was taking a fairly safe pace for hiking downhill.