Saturday, the Buckeye Striders took a road trip to Chillicothe to walk with our good friend Pat and her new walking friends. The park we started in near the Adena Mansion was beautiful!

As we went along, we enjoyed walking through the town seeing the local neighborhoods. The people out in their yards were so friendly and all greeted us. It was very fun. But I should have been a little worried when the nice lady in her front yard asked, “Are you going to ‘kill the hill?'”

Not sure what she said I just agreed and said “yeah” as we walked by. If I had really been paying attention, I would have been worried.

Shortly after, we turned a corner and caught sight of “the hill”. Oh my goodness it was big!

We all tried to attack it in a smart way. All of us slowed — some of us slowed a LOT! The walkers from Chillicothe were not nearly as fazed as the rest of us. And it wasn’t until we were halfway up that we heard the stories about the very challenging race called Kill the Hill.

I found the hill so challenging, I started walking backward. (It sounds silly, but it does help because you are working your muscles just a little differently.) And at the top it did take a little while for us to recover.

The funny thing was, after the grueling hill, the locals got a little turned around. They weren’t quite sure what the best way to get back to our cars was and we ended up with a couple of short backtracks and walking for nearly 20 min longer than we had expected.

The good news is, many of us had 6 miles scheduled for Saturday and we walked 5 — with the hill I think we were even. Unfortunately, several were not acclimated and had not expected the extra mile. They were having a little difficulty.

But once we got to iHop and were able to relax and eat, we were fine!

Thanks to the Chillicothe members of the Buckeye Striders for hosting a fun walk and breakfast meeting! I’m sure we’ll be back — though I think we can skip the hill next time.

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