Hills, those glorious hills!

Hills seem to be a reoccurring theme with my running workouts lately. Living in Wilmington – hills are not much of an issue unless you specifically seek them out. Well in the last three weeks – I have done 3 hard hill workouts.

I was in West Virginia/Pennsylvania for my wife’s family reunion and got in a great run. I wanted to do an easy 4 miler, should take right at 40-44 minutes at AC pace – maybe here in Wilmington but not there. My out and back course tackled 3 hills on the way out and then I had to run back. My time was just over 50 minutes – damn!! One of the hills, on the way back, was 0.5 miles long and I climbed what felt like Everest in terms of altitude.

I have started running with Tom in the morning – to get around the summer heat – so I have had a chance to run something other than the track workouts. Last week we did Summer Rest Road. It is a nice 1.5 mile loop with a 500 m portion with a nice steady climb then some gentle rollers before the last 400 m being flat. It was my first morning workout and I was a little dehydrated – my excuses because I sucked big wind during the run. I did a 1.5 mile warm up run and then we did 3 loops (tempo pace, charge hill easy loop, tempo pace). The first tempo run I was within 10 seconds of my pace (13 min/1.5 mile or 8:40/mile), the charge hill/easy loop was tough – I could not get my heart rate down and I felt like my legs were moving through water. The last tempo was to hold my first sets pace – no such luck this morning. The hill killed me – dead, done, I should have quite then – I had to walk after the crest of the hill and I slogged along to the finish. That was the most suffering I had done in a while.

This morning we did hills at Nunn Street. Tom has an 800 m loop that incorporates a solid hill, some downhill, and some flats. I did a 1.2 mile warm up before we started. My group was to do 6 sets on a 4:10 pace. Our instructions were to start out and build pace to the base of the hill (approx 150-200 m), carry the hill – not charge the hill, then use the down hill to get back to pace and carry the flats home. Tonya and I did our six sets and I really felt pretty good about the workout. Lap 1 was fast, 4:02, Laps 2, 3, and 4 were right on pace, lap 5 was 4:16 and lap 6 was 4:22. We finished with a 1.2 mile cool down and some strides. The workout was hard and I suffered the last hill but I recovered on the down hill and made up some time on the flats. Over all a good day!