Sunday 5 June 2011

Hill reps

Well, the idea of today was to go up to Wormstones 5 times from the road, as fast as possible and see what kind of average times I was doing. Its a 600metre stretch and knowledge of how fast I was heading up the hill is going to be useful for future training intensity planning.

Im pretty tired from yesterday- although it was a rest day we were out at Rockover Climbing Wall providing onsite massage for the competition there. We weren't going at it like an exercise thing, but the all day being up and about was pretty intense and tiring, so it was a bit of an effort getting out onto the hill.

The times for my hill reps (these are not actual times for the 600 metre drag, but rather the average of what it would have taken for 1km at that pace) were as follows
7:29, 8:29, 8:50, 8:54 and 8:41.
There was a crazy headwind going on as well- not something that you get in a gym in London- or even on Greenwich hill- which certainly slowed me down- and made breathing a fair bit more interesting.
My HR stayed pretty much at 168 throughout the reps- which is fairly high up on the scale...

Looking at it as it is, the average pace would be 8:28, which means that I had 4 reps of Junk Intensity, not so good. However, as I say, this is the first time, and actually more of a test to see what is going on with my hill speed. Don't look at snapshots, look at trends.
This is only the beginning, but I suspect that my hill climbing needs to be looked at in some detail.

The question is, how can I get to the point where I can climb a hill like this in 7mins on aerobic capacity rather than dipping into anaerobic capacity? I think that the word "Slowly" comes into it.

Just if anyone is interested, the Connect route.
Hill reps on Wormstones by ttbudd at Garmin Connect - Details

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