Hill reps in the rain

Marking student papers this morning, looking out at the nasty weather... this is the stage when other people would be demotivated and not really wanting to get out there. Nope, I forced myself to finish the paper before eagerly getting my running gear on and heading out into the rain and wind- delightful!
Today is a hard day, and it was meant to be a hard weights day. However, I have that planned in for Thursday when we go over to Strength and Performance for a morning of tests. I can imagine that is going to be a pretty hard day. So the hill reps that were meant to be on Thursday were brought back to today.

I didn't want to do the same hill as last time (lightside) for a couple of reasons, although it would be good to compare times over the same distance, and get some idea of how much better (or worse) I am getting, it would be more beneficial to rep out on other hills with different gradients, different lengths, and different underfoot characteristics. Week to week changes are not all that telling, so running on Lightside this week will give very little data to analyse really, and will probably give false readings. Better to look at a wider section of hills over a much much longer period of time.

I took a bit of a longer run in today, averaging at a good speed, of low 5s and high 4s per km. It was an amusing run in with the paths looking like small mountain streams. great fun.
Got to the part of the hill which I had designated for running up, and started. I got to the point where I thought I was going to collapse, and carried on going. And then a bit more just for good measure. Then I saw a distictive mark on the hill and carried on going to there, and turned round to head back down the hill.
Normally I can run downhill quite happily- but after that effort, it was all I could do to walk back down.

I repped that out another 3 times, all to the same place, slowing each time, but keeping myself running. It was the fact that I kept running and didn't stop to walk in the last race that really held me in good stead, so thats what I concentrated on, no matter how much it hurt.
Jens Voight is a bit of an inspiration in terms of suffering, so I guess I'm learning from him.
Haven't managed to apply this thinking to big hills yet, but start small with massive effort, and from there on, learn to just keep going at speed.
At some point I will need to look at keeping in aerobic threshold when going up hills, but for the time being, anaerobic training followed by a fast run back, and over another hill is the way to go.

Out for 54 mins, and have a tightness in my left soleus. Foam rollering it earlier, and will be doing so after the next paper that needs to be marked...
Nice.