Silly Hills - Why must you Hurt so Good?

Today we broke routine and did not do ciruit drills. At first I was excited, felt like I was getting off easy for today. Oh no, at the end I was wishing for the relief of "taking a break" during the drills themselves! Hill repeats got a little more intense today. I would say I enjoyed the run...mostly the last 10 seconds of it when I knew it was about to be over! Coach Al mapped a 1/2 mile loop through the Berkeley neighborhood near the track. Somehow this loop seemed to ONLY go uphill after each turn, although physics would suggest there would be a downhill at some point. I couldn't find that point. He had us run it 3 times, so 1.5 total miles of continuous uphill. I thought I was in a nightmare and wanted to wake up to downhill. Somehow I finished. Coach said this will get us ready for SF hills. What did I get myself into???