The One About Hill Training

Wheeeeeeeeeew. Happy hump day to YOU! I just completed my second session of hill training… and Oh. My. God. I’m excited for bed.  

Last Wednesday was the first session and it started with 3 hills- running up hill at 75-80% maximum speed and running down at a recovery pace. The hill is 400 meters long and last week it was easy…. I was running at the same pace as my instructor which clearly isn’t close to my maximum speed because it was a breeze. This week that light breeze turned into a tornado. I decided I need to get more out of my training so I ran solo at my maximum speed; I never knew 400 meters could feel so long. My heart was racing at the speed of light and I literally had to coach myself to the end of the hill. “You can do it, You can do it,” my high-pitched voice said over the techno music coming out of my IPod. By the time I was at the bottom of the hill for the fourth time, the modest incline looked like Mount Kilimanjaro. But obviously I survived and it is this training that I will appreciate when I am 15 kilometers into my half marathon and questioning my own sanity. That’s the significance of hill training: my body burned with every step I took but it instantly made me a stronger runner.

And yet, secretly, I loved every second of the physical challenge: afterwards I felt like I could conquer the world- or at least climb an African mountain!

Anyways, I’m going to cut this short. My bed is just a couple, flat meters away, and I don’t even have to run to get there.

Until next run,

Running Romance