Hills Are Evil!

Today I did a workout that's fairly new to me. Weaning myself off my beloved treadmill, I'm running outside more to get the hills, both up and down, in. This morning I ran 8 miles, 1 mile warmup, then I raced up the huge hill at Lincoln Street at 10K pace (or faster), slowed up for the rest of the mile, then repeated that hill 3 times. Then did 2 miles fairly slowly up Ridgewood, headed back and hit some more hills at 10K pace. Wow! I didn't think I could do it. After that first hill I actually felt sick. So it was quite a great sense of accomplishment when I completed the workout.

I liked several things about this workout. First, the hills were tough but not too big-- Lincoln was the biggest at about 300 meters. So I could run the hills, which will (hopefully) increase my leg and quad strength. Second, I liked that it forced me to really speed up the pace after I'd already been running a few miles, and was tired. I was amazed that I actually ran a faster overall pace by speeding up those hills, then slowing way down, than running a steady state training run at my normal training pace. Today I ran 8 at an average 9:07 pace, while yesterday I ran 4 steady at 9:16.

I am beginning to get a feel for Coach Brian's strategy, and I like it. I think it's the change I need in my training to bring my time down.