Jack and Jill Went Up the Hills

I apologize for the lull in action, but my blogging activity tends to coincide with my running. This is a running blog after all.

For a few days this week, I was dragging. The good thing about not wearing a watch is that you don't know exactly how slow you are running. This is good because you run according to how you feel instead on obsessive-compulsively checking your watch. After a tempo run last week, I needed a couple of recovery days.

Sure there are tougher workouts than tempo runs, but I have not done much "fast" running in the past year and a half. Everything is kind of rusty.

Eventually I recovered, only to do an intense hill workout this past Thursday. It was with a running group I never ran with before. I had no idea they had a hill workout scheduled, but I was already there. The reason I was weary is that the last time I did a hill workout after running on nothing but flat terrain for a long time, I broke my foot.

I don't think I broke anything this time (knock on wood). We warmed up 1.5 miles, ran a 4 mile very hilly course (I lost count how many hills) around some neighborhoods, then cooled down another 1.5. The 7 miles was the longest I have run in a while, since I broke my foot last fall, but it felt good with the easy warm-up and cool-down.

Since I had not run hills in a while, I started the 4 mile route a little fast. Actually, I did great for about the first 3 miles, but then we hit a really steep hill and I fell back. I still finished within 15 seconds of the lead guys though. They were impressed. They said this was the hardest workout they do. Little do they know this is only me at 22 mpw while they are in the midst of marathon training.