Wk11/D1 - A Very Good Hill Workout X 8 on a Tuneless Tuesday

Warm-up: 1.7K @12:05

Avg. Pace 7:14/km

Hill Workout X 8: 4.0K @31:40

Avg. Pace 7:53/km

Cool-down: 2.0K @14:08

Avg. Pace 7:03/km

A good day for a good hill workout. :)

I'm so glad that I took yesterday off as a rest day. My training program schedules an easy 8K every Monday, but I generally opt to take a rest day after a Sunday race. As it turns out, I was bone tired yesterday, as in, anything I did took great effort. :( There was no way I could have gone for a run; I just didn't have anything left to give after a crazy busy week. I believe that after 10 weeks of training, my body is tired and that I needed to take my "rest day" options just to have a bit of a break, especially before I begin the final "Track Work" phase of my training. Today proved to me it was the right thing to do. :)

Today marks the beginning of my last week for the "Strength Training" phase. I feel very good about getting outside to complete this workout before it started to rain ... again. I left the dogs at home :( and left the iPod at home, too, because it's Tuneless Tuesday (side note: I ran without music last Saturday, too! I missed having it on a sluggish run, but I did it). Me, myself, and I were not accompanied by any snipers on this run. I am pleased to report that those buggers did not appear today!

By the time I reached my hill base, I was feeling strong. Such a good sign! And my first foray up the hill went exceedingly well, the 'easiest' I have ever run up this hill. :) Another good sign! I didn't "fly" up it nor did it feel "easy," just for clarification, but it was good to have the sensation that if I had come across this steep of a hill early on in a race, I could have run up it without it wiping me out!

I was sharing the hill with two skateboarders so I spent my time at the hill watching out for them. I also remembered my sore hip flexor on the left side from last week so I made sure to vary where I ran on the hill this week - some of the trips up were done on the inside right, some were done in the middle, and others on the far left sidewalk. As I type now, I am not feeling the same tenderness that I did last week so I think this helped.

I actually felt good about each trip I made up. I honestly didn't think I had it in me to run up this hill 8 times, but I tried concentrating on one trip up at a time rather than on the number I had left to run. This seemed to help. :) I also tried to lose myself more in my thoughts so that I wasn't solely focusing on the challenge the hill was giving me. It was only on the last hike up, when my pace was slightly faster than a walk (!) that I had to resort to my counting game to distract me from how hard it was for me. But I have to tell you, the feeling of accomplishment, running up and down 4 km of hill, is great! :)

I then ran home and happily noticed my pace picking up near the end.

I am yawning up a storm while writing this so I think I will sleep deeply tonight. Once again I have the option of running 5K or a rest day tomorrow. I will play it by ear and see how I am feeling, but I think right now that, if I can sleep well tonight, I will be out running tomorrow. :)

GYM UPDATE

It took effort on my part to go to yoga last night. This is the busy class with Grace, not Kundalini yoga that I enjoy so much on Wed. and Fri. We did a lot of work on our legs and boy! was it needed after my race on Sunday so I am very, very happy about making it to last night's class. I did notice today when running that my legs felt great. However, my shoulders were a little tight. We did not work on arms/shoulders too much last night so it was interesting for me to "feel" today how we hadn't. I really find that it makes a difference!