Dear Blog-ary: An Up Hill Training Battle

A line (quite literally) was drawn in the sand and we all took a semi serious racing stance. Our objective was to run up the hill at a pace we could afford to maintain on subsequent hill repeats.

We had one minute to get as far up the hill as we could. As soon as our time was up we set a marker on the path to remind us of how far we'd gotten and we began to run down again. On our recovery run down the hill we concentrated on being as light and quiet on our feet as possible while holding a strong posture. 20 seconds or so remained after we arrived at the bottom of the hill to our line in the sand (depending on how long it took us to get back down). This was a perfect opportunity to grab a quick sip of water and slow our breathing down. After a short countdown, we were running back up the hill again, on a chase back to our marker...or further, before time was up. Then we turned around to descend again.

To avoid the repetition of the "play by play" I'll just say this continued until we were finally on our last push up hill. I find that having a Trainer run alongside me pushes me a little harder. It gives me a little extra burst of energy and strength. After we were finished we all grabbed our waters and discussed how we were feeling. The general consensus was "tired but not defeated". We didn't push to the point of complete exhaustion and we were all energized and feeling good. I suppose this is part of the positive mental preparation that is an essential part of training.

It must be working because I'm looking forward to next weeks run at Cedar Hill Golf Course! . . . Kirsten Wolf