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.

Hill reps- testing the adductors

Went out for a brief run today, checking out how my adductors were feeling. And also to check just how bad I am at hills.
As it turns out, I'm pretty rubbish at them. The idea was to go up Lightside 4 or 5 times, see how it goes and then work my way home nice and gently. Lightside is a longer hill than I anticipated. I didn't want to do long hill reps, but rather short, sharp lungbursting ascents, no more than 2 mins in length, just to really get my anaerobic system working and see how I cope with it.

I just went up to the first wall on Lightside, the first time was ok- though I felt pretty horrible going up. It was hot, humid and nasty. After the jog down, I went up again, this time, it hurt, but I still managed to keep going to the top,
3rd time really really hurt. As in, I thought I wasn't going to make it to the top.
Last rep it was all I could do to keep going and I was nigh on coughing up my insides by the time I hit the top. I couldn't even jog down the hill even if I wanted to, the eccentric loading on my quads was just too much. Walking was pretty hard too- which was astonishing, normally I'm fine just rocking down hills no matter what state I'm in. It seems that going deep into the red in anaerobiclly up a hill is perhaps the hardest thing I can do in terms of running- and something I should probably stay away from during in a race.
Training is another matter altogether.

Train Hard.
Race Easy.
adductors were fine, looks like I might be able to race on Wed.

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