Today I drove to Crater Lake National Park. It’s just 2.5 hours from Bend, so I had the afternoon to hike. You don’t need to hike to see the lake, though. Honestly, the view of the lake from the visitor center was better than the view from Garfield Peak, the top of the mountain I hiked up. I’m still glad I did the hike. Today was a gorgeous day with clear skies and Crater Look looked unreal. The water was so blue that it looked like someone had put food coloring in it. And the reflection of the mountains in the water was so clear, that it was hard to tell where the mountain ended and the reflection began.

The hike itself was a bunch of switchbacks up the mountain with great views of the lake every once in a while and at the top. I thought my legs would be jelly by the time I got to the top because the 1000 ft of elevation gain is more than I’m used to, but I was surprised that my legs were fine. My heart was the problem. I had to stop to catch my breath often. The good thing about the issue being my heart and not my legs is that after stopping for a bit and letting my heart rate go down, I felt brand new and could keep going. Honestly, I could have kept walking up more mountains once I was done with the hike, but I decided not to push it.

When I was still working at the Runkeeper office in Boston before COVID, there was a time when everyone’s passion for running made me want to try it. So I trained for a 5K, ran the 5K, and then retired from running. I used Runkeeper’s My First 5K plan to train. In that plan, coach Erin talks you through each workout as you’re going through it. Sometimes, in the middle of a run, she would tell you to remember how good you felt the day before after your run and to use that feeling to keep you going today. I always wished I could tell her to stop saying that because the day before, I had felt like I was dying and I questioned why I was even training for a 5K. There was no way that feeling was going to motivate me during my next run.

As I was leaving Crater Lake today, my legs were slightly sore, I knew I had blisters on my feet, and I was exhausted, but I was happy and felt really good. I think that was what coach Erin was expecting me to feel after running. Honestly, if I had felt that after a run, remembering that feeling would actually be a great motivator the following day. After today, if you told me to hike up a mountain that doesn’t have a good view at the top, simply to get that feeling back, I probably would. I’m glad coach Erin feels that way after running and I’m glad I figured out how to get myself to feel that way too.

That was all the time I had at Crater Lake. Tomorrow I’m driving to Rocklin, CA to see more cousins.