Training Log - Thursday, April 8, 2010

Two words, hill workout. Richard, Mike and I meet at Indian Creek Greenway for the much dreaded hill workout we have been putting off for a while. Each one of us had already worked out an excuse not to make it, but in the end, we all opted to just get it done. We started with a one mile warmup and headed to the hill. The hill is actually the road leading into this neighborhood park and greenway. It is a 0.15 miles hill with the first half of it being very steep. If you're local, think Cotton Row 10K, slightly less steep, but longer. The first one went ok. After the second, we started to count already. This felt pretty rough. The temperatures had warmed up again after an overnight thunderstorm and we were still adjusting to the warmth of the midday sun. On the third run, we all started to feel it. At this point, three down, seven to go sounded really unappealing. It didn't feel much better, either. We continued to push each other up the hill, over and over agin. Not in words, just by trying to beat each other or hang with each other. Before we knew it, we had climbed the hill for the tenth and final time. After our recovery downhill jog, we finished with a one mile cooldown. It all added up to just over 5 miles. As bad as I physically felt, heavy legs, headache, etc. I was really glad we did it. The value of hill and speed workouts cannot be overemphasized, no matter what type of event you train for, be it a 5K road race a 50 Mile trail run. Next week, it's a speed workout on one of the local tracks. Oh joy.