Tough hill run

I graduated today to hill repeats, which is different from a hilly run in that the runner encounters hills  much more frequently. It was pretty hard work, and I certainly appreciated the cool weather to do it in.

Here's how it went: The first 3 miles were warm up, and I did them at a fairly slow pace. Even these warmup miles were done on a hilly course, but I never pushed the pace during this phase.

The middle three miles were where I did the hill repeats. I picked a hill that takes me about 2 minutes to climb, ran to the bottom of it, then ran up it at a quick pace. Then I jogged back down the hill, turned around at the bottom, and ran half way up at a fast pace before jogging back to the bottom. I continue the half-way-up-jog-back until I hit the 6-mile mark. At that point I ran up the entire hill as fast as I could (not too fast at this point), jogged down, then back up again.

This left me about 1.5 miles for cool down, which I was happy to do. The final totals were 8.1 miles in 1:15:51, a 9:22 pace.

This is the kind of workout that you can make as hard as you want, and no matter what speed you run it, the benefits are significant. Obviously, the faster you climb, the harder it is. I didn't sprint up the hills, but I pushed the pace. This builds strength and speed, and raises your lactic acid threshold. The higher that threshold, the longer you last on those real long runs and on the marathon.

With the run, I went over 800 miles for the year, almost all of it since the middle of March.