Happy Woman's Day!

Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer.

Like I said on Sunday, this week marks the start of a more focused training phase following months and months of easy running. This early in, I haven't done much yet but so far I'm feeling great.

Sunday's extra miles didn't seem to leave any fatigue in the legs, which confirms my impression right after that run that I had plenty more left in the tank. The most challenging aspects were the outside conditions with a seemingly never-ending gale force wind ably abetted by the occasional heavy rain shower, not exactly my most favourite running weather. The effort level of my easy runs has definitively decreased slightly since I started the occasional workout but the pace continues to stabilise while the HR is dropping - always a good thing.

I started a new kind of workout on Wednesday, namely hill running. I'm not going straight up the Windy Gap yet but picked the hilliest road within 2 miles of home I could think of, which happens to be on the same mountain as Windy Gap, albeit on its other side. What was clear from the first time I hit a gradient was that my leg strength isn't quite what it used to be. Obviously that didn't come as a surprise. I went over the hill twice in each direction, on one side it was an at times very steep climb of half a mile for about 200 feet elevation, on the other side it was a more gradual but longer climb of 300 feet elevation over a mile. Initially I was ambitious enough to try a strong steady pace for a minute or two going right over the top but on the second half I was content just to make it over the hill without a major crisis.

I did have a bit over a mile to spare for today's planned distance which I could have used for one extra climb on the steep side but decided that I had probably pushed my luck already for a first hill outing and headed for home and added a much flatter out-and-back instead.

Let's see how the legs will like this tomorrow and Friday!

6 Mar

7 miles, 57:09, 8:10 pace, HR 142

7 Mar

7 miles, 55:32, 7:55 pace, HR 145

8 Mar

10 miles, 1:24:06, 8:24 pace, HR 149

   hill run