Hills and Drills

I'm unashamedly copying Mystery Coach's training plan that brought me a sub-3 marathon last year, even though I am training for an Ultra. At least I'm trying to - I can't help but notice that last year my pace/HR progression was significantly better than this time round. I'm not sure if I can blame it all on the marathons and ultras I did towards the end of 2011, or my lack of understanding.

Anyway, I'm now in the next phase, which is primarily filled with hill drills. That's not the same "bounding" drills Lydiard originally prescribed to his runners, but a set of things that are supposed to strengthen particular areas, like the ankles or thighs.

Every hill workout start with a 15 minutes warm up, then 4x30 second sprint efforts, which are then followed by the actual hill drills; 15 minutes of easy running between each set, and the same again for your cool down.

My first drill consisted of slowly springing up the hill primarily using the ankles. That felt surprisingly easy, and I got to 4 minutes without trying too hard.

The second set was "driving from the thighs", which turned out to be significantly harder. I did 90 seconds on the first try, walked back down and added 60 seconds for the second go. Neither time was pre-determined; I simply stopped when it started to feel rather hard. It's always better to do too little than too much, especially at the beginning.

I checked my training logs (and emails) from last year, and found that back then the ankle drills had felt easy enough and the others much harder - at least that particular aspect seems to work the same way as last year.

In an attempt to take it easy, I was only planning on 8 miles this morning. However, by 6 o'clock in the morning my good lady wife, who is still in Dublin, could obviously stand it no longer and texted me to give me an update on the status of her sister's progress in labour. Thanks, darling. Going back to sleep didn't work so I got up early and did 10 miles instead of 8, just to pass the time. Stupid? Maybe. But that's me, you should know by now.

I got another update at the more reasonable time of 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and I have a new baby niece called Maria, everyone is healthy and happy and congratulations to her parents and (now) big sister.

4 Jan

9+ miles, 1:19:30, 8:46 pace, HR 145
Hill workout: 1: 4x30sec sprints, 2: ankles (4 mins), 3: thighs (1x90 sec, 1x60 sec)

5 Jan

10 miles, 1:19:31, 7:57 pace, HR 145