Run To The Hills

And to think I was looking forward to that ...

After weeks and weeks of base training that consisted of mainly running well within myself at all times, the next phase is not yet intended to do all the hard work needed to reach peak fitness, but to get me ready to do so. Mystery Coach has explained the concept in great detail in Mike’s old blog and if you’re interested in the training I strongly suggest you go and have a look.

The very first thing I noticed on Tuesday morning as soon as I left the house was the significantly increased temperatures, they had gone up from 1C on Monday to 8C today. I felt seriously overdressed in my long sleeves and tights but did not fancy going back and change. The first “workout” after 15 minutes of warm-up were a set of 4x30 seconds strides with 2 minutes recovery in-between, where I concentrated to run as fast as I could while still being relaxed and in full control. After 15 further easy minutes I was at the base of the hill that I have used for hill repeats many times before. A few seconds later I came across a curtain of dark, which turned out to be a fallen tree across the entire road, probably from the storm that had blown over 2 weeks ago. I scrambled beneath the trunk and then did about 2 minutes of a hill drill, namely using just the ankles to push myself off the ground. This felt remarkably easy, too easy, so I decided to use the ankle action to push myself higher into the air, springing up the hill very slowly. As I was told not to overdo it I left it at that, worked my way back down past two trees that were blocking half the road and underneath the one that had fallen entirely across it.

I figured that crawling underneath a fallen tree in the darkness was not without its dangers and decided to use a different hill for the next drill, half a mile further down the road past Ard-na-Sidhe, leading steeply up to the Devil’s Elbow. The drawback of that second hill, apart from being further away from home, was its asphalt surface but it’s the best I could think of. My third drill, after another 15 minutes of easy running, were high knee lifts going up the very steep road. This was a much tougher exercise as I tried (but mostly failed) to get the knees all the way up to waist level. I did about a minute of that until I reached a flatter piece of road for a bit of recovery and followed it up with about 40 seconds of more high knees. That was enough.

Wednesday morning went similar, but at least I was in shorts and t-shirt. Again the work consisted of 3 different drills separated by about 15 minutes of easy running. The first drill was the same as yesterday, 4x30 seconds. The second one was striding out on a gradual half-mile downhill section, taking longish strides working on pulling the legs through and stretching them out behind me. This felt tougher than anticipated and with the warning in my ear to be careful with that exercise due to its stresses on the legs I pulled out a little bit earlier than planned. The third exercise was uphill again, driving with the thighs, but looking back at the instructions now I think I got that wrong because I turned it more into a bounding exercise when the brief was to initiate the drive from the quads while going up slowly.

Anyway, I can feel the effort in my legs, and that’s after doing only the minimum number of sessions. Tomorrow is a recovery day before 2 further days of drills. Actually it was not too bad, the fact that each exercise was different kept things interesting; in the past when trying to make sense of the Lydiard hill drills I usually did e.g. 4 repeats of bounding in one single session and eventually ended up hating it. I think I will be better able to cope with the coach’s way of doing things.

25 Jan

8.75 miles, 1:12:49 8:19 pace, HR 147
   4x30sec, ankles, high knee

26 Jan

9 miles, 1:10:20, 7:49 pace, HR 148
  4x30sec, downhill strides, driving thighs