12.30.08

Back to the hills. I'll keep this one short as I had a good run. I did a few laps around the track at the middle school, then a few around the school. After about a half hour I stopped for a cliff block and some gatorade before my ascent to ...THE BEAST. Yes, back to my old friend. My legs were feeling a bit tired even in my warmup so I wasn't expecting much, but dang that first hill was way harder than I expected. I wasn't dying but I did feel like I was in slow motion, and my legs were already burning just after one. I had 12-14 on the schedule.

So I thought maybe I'll just run 8. One at a time I traversed the hill all the way to the top, slowing to a near crawl as I reached the summit each time. I checked my ipod on most of them and it was around 1:15 each. I definitely wasn't sprinting these bad boys, more just trying to survive. My legs were really burning each time and I think it was almost harder to go slow. If I had fully sprinted my lungs would give out too early, but by slowing down I also felt like gravity was fighting me even harder. But there are no trade-offs when running up a hill. Either you do it, or you don't. At 6 hills I was really wanting to make it to that eighth one. But each time coming down the steep slope on the other side I recovered and just went back to work.

At eight I knew I had a few more in me and thought I could at least match my last hill workout of 10. I found that when I did that tenth one, that I really didn't give a full out effort that I wanted to end on, so I just kept going. Legs driving, arms flailing, just trying anything to get back up this hill and reach the fire hydrant so I can slog around to the other side. My ipod updated me and I only had about nine minutes left. Time enough for another hill and then the five minutes back to the car I figured. So I ended up with twelve hill "sprints" for today. It was a tough workout. My muscles almost feel like they are too tight, but I'll live.

So it was a good workout. I definitely went a bit slower this time around. No full all out sprints, but still I just worked on driving and using my legs to propel me so I think it almost made the workout harder. Today was supposed to be my last hill workout before speed, but since I skipped out on last week I'll make it up. I really feel that these hill workouts are going to improve my leg strength a ton. I know I have the endurance, judging by the length of my long runs, but I'll really need strength to maintain a fast pace with less effort. So I'm not sure if there will just be one more hill workout. I felt really tired at 6, well my legs did, so I think if I still do a shorter hill workout of 6-8 hills every other week or something like that it could really continue to build my leg strength during my speed phase. I'm really not sure yet, but I know that it's a great workout and I really believe there are many gains yet to be made from the hills.

2:50pm. dowell springs hill. 57 degrees 6mph wind from SSW.
1:45:46, bf 965