Hillwork, ugh

Hillwork is not something I look forward to. However I planned it, and even though the negative voice inside said it was too hard and I shouldn't risk injury and gave me all sorts of excuses not to do it, I did do it.

1+ mile to warm up and cool down afterward, running to and from the hill I planned on conquering - four times. It's a fairly steep hill, and Google Earth tells me that the distance is about 320 yards, or 0.18 miles on direction. If I had measured it in advance I would have made it an even 0.25 miles or an even 400 yards just for consistency with general track and field... oh, well.

The plan was to run up it at a comfortable pace, jog or walk back down, and then try in each subsequent time to equal or beat my previous time. Since I haven't done a drill like this in a while I figured four total times would be sufficient, even though that seemed almost impossible to my negative voice inside.

I did time each run up, but didn't save them. I know that my first run up was around 2:10, and my last run up was about 1:44, which felt like a decent improvement. The idea was more about challenging myself during the run, rather than earn bragging rights about being a speed demon afterward. I'm not a speed demon, but this is different enough from what I normally do that I feel it breaks up the routine nicely.

Oh, and the weather was absolutely perfect for running, maybe even a little too warm once I got moving (the high was 72 degrees F). But considering I did this during the warmest part of the day that's to be expected. I was well hydrated and stretched out well before and after the hill drill.

That's a total of about 3.7-3.8 miles today. This feels like such a light week with only about 10-11 total miles, but after last week's over 20 miles maybe I do need to back off a bit. Or is that just the negative voice talking? Can't tell.

Now I'll be taking Friday and Saturday off before the Cinco de Mayo 5K on Sunday. Arriba!