Hills Build Character

A fast and wise Angry Runner once told me “hills build character,” so here we go.  After running the Chesebro trail half last weekend I’m even more determined to do better on hills.

Running varied hilly routes each week doesn’t really tell me if I’m improving.  So I decided on a short little hilly route to serve as a gauge for my progress on hills.  I’ll run it once a week, or if that gets really boring, once every two weeks.  It looks a little something like this:

I ran the 3.1 miles in 32:54.  Not super fast, I know, but I “ran” (it wasn’t pretty) most of that distance, with the exception of one walk break from mile 1.8-1.9.  That’s significantly less walking than I did on a similar route a few weeks ago.

Thank you for all the responses on my post last week about training plans. I think I’ll stick with Run Less Run Faster, but adding in a couple shorter runs.  I only gave RLRF 6.5 weeks in the fall and saw serious progress, so I’d like to see how much improvement I can make with 12 weeks of that plan.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
3 mi Hills	Track	Easy or Rest	Tempo	Bike or Rest	Long	Hike?

We’ll see how that goes. If the added mileage doesn’t work, I’ll revisit.

Holy Hills + February Recap

For the last 11 days, my legs have been trying to adapt to these:







I think it’s safe to say that I don’t need to do any dedicated hill training now that this is my terrain for long runs, speed work, and tempo runs.

February Recap
In two words: Kinda lame.

Feb 1-5: 75 minutes of yoga, 6.22 miles of running

Feb 6-12: 9.06 miles of running, approximately 29 hours of sitting in a car.

Feb 13-19: 5.13 miles of running, approximately 22 hours of sitting in a car.

Feb 20-26:  24.51 miles of running + 6 hrs of skiing 

Feb 27-28: 3.8 miles of running (+ a longer run today)

February Totals: 1 yoga class, 48.72 miles of running, 6 hours of downhill skiing.

I did some a couple sets of pushups throughout the month, probably 1x/week, on average.  I hope packing and unpacking counts for something; there was some heavy lifting involved.  I did an occasional plank here and there but no specific core work.

I am aware that going from three weeks of <10 miles of running to a week with 24 miles of running might be stupid, but I needed to move!  I felt fine throughout my running and in fact, the one day of skiing impacted my calves more than the hill running did (Seriously, I took 2 days off from running: I only wore compression socks or calf sleeves, foam roller-ed them, and walked a lot).

I’m saying it now so I will stick to it: My goal for March is to run 25 miles a week, with a day of arm stuff/pushups, and a day of core stuff (crunches/planks).  This weekend I've decided I will join a local running group so I can meet some people in the area and learn some new running routes!

More Hills

Woah, I haven't posted since Monday.  This week is kicking my butt, I guess.

Last night I had a pretty good hills workout!  My plan called for another 40 minute tempo run, but I just did one of those last week, and it's been a couple weeks since I have done a hills workout.  I recently posted the crazy elevation of my upcoming half...so you can see why some hill practice is necessary!

My plan was to do 7x hills.

It was in the mid 40s but the sun was setting and it was really windy (gusts in the 25-30mph range) so it felt a lot colder.  It was especially unpleasant having the wind blow in my face while running up hill.  I was beginning to talk myself into stopping my run early somewhere between hill 4 through hill 6.

Then while running down and back up hill number 6, I saw another runner crazy enough to be doing hill workouts in the dark + wind.  After finishing hill #7, I was so happy to have finished what I did, and started to talk myself into running an 8th hill.  Crazy hill runner guy was still running up and down that same hill...maybe his presence encouraged me to do another.

Each of the hills was anywhere from .25 to .4 miles.  I was pleasantly surprised to see I maintained a sub 10:00 pace while running uphill 8 times.  In fact, it was more in the 9:20-9:40ish range for most uphills, with one closer to 9:10.  After I ran up the hill I walked briefly, or just slowed my running to the bottom of the next hill.  So my running was fast uphill and easy for everything else.

It's weird how in the moment I wanted to poke my eyes out and go home early, yet after most of the run was behind me I felt so optimistic about it.

Total: 6.39 miles.

In case you're curious, here was my last hills run (whoops, it was more like a month ago).  Actually, looking back at that run, I have to take a moment to be proud of what my heart rate looked like this time compared with last time (you should be able to click on graphs to enlarge).  I did more hills, ran them faster, and my HR recovered more in between!!

8x hills 3/2/11:

6x hills 1/28/11:

And, so this post is not strictly Garmin graphs, I will share a fun new food from my favorite Wegmans.  It's called the Sunrise Blend and it is a blend of a lot of ingredients I am not familiar with: wheat bulgur, buckwheat groats, Colusari heirloom red rice, whole grain quinoa flakes, and brown flax seeds.

Yay for 4g of fiber and 7g of protein!  You can make it hot on the stove top, OR

you can stir some into yogurt the night before, as per this serving suggestion from Wegmans.

I ate some hot with a sliced banana and a little drizzle of honey.  It's good, but not a "quick" breakfast. if made on the stove top (bring water to boil; add & let stand for 25 minutes).

Ok, good night!