After yet another short, easy run on Monday I added a bit of spice to Tuesday’s workout in the form of hill sprints. These are meant to be short sprints at maximum effort, not enough to get anaerobic but enough to activate your muscle fibres. It’s supposed to train your neuromuscular system and is apparently effective at increasing running efficiency, but I have to take their word for that.
I did not have a specific number of repeats in mind but I ran each effort from the beginning of the road to the gate, which happened to take about 15 seconds, not that I was timing the efforts, and then walked down the hill slowly for recovery. Each sprint is hard enough to raise the HR by 30-40 beats, but the max HR is reached several seconds AFTER the end of the sprint. Another few seconds later I would be hit by a wave of nausea, but by the time I had walked back down the hill I always felt fully recovered. After the fifth repeat the nausea was accompanied by feeling dizzy, which was magnified again after the sixth; I was dizzy, light headed, tunnel vision with stars in front of my eyes. I have fainted on a couple of occasions in my life and that’s exactly what it feels like immediately before the blackout so I left it at that. Running until you faint may be quite some story, but not one I was particularly keen to add to me repertoire that day.
This may sound a bit dramatic, but it only lasted for a couple of seconds. I immediately felt right as rain again and had no issues on my slow jog back home.
Niamh had a girls’ night out on Wednesday and got a taxi back home. In the morning I took the key and ran into town to collect the car and drove it back home. It’s always good to remind your better half that there are advantages to having a runner in your house from time to time.
- 2 Aug
- 6.1 miles, 47:48, 7:50 pace, HR 142
- 3 Aug
- 5 miles, 44:14, 8:51 pace, HR 144
incl. 6x15 max. effort sec hill sprints - 4 Aug
- 7 miles, 53:49, 7:41 pace, HR 147
Sounds like you were dehydrated Thomas? Take care.
ReplyDeleteHill sprints certainly are tough for the few seconds before and after you reach the top, but always well recovered by the time you get home. Not for the faint-hearted ;).
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