My Neighborhood Is A Playground

This morning I set out to run some hill reps. It's been a while since I've done a session like this, but it was time! My neighborhood is like the ultimate playground when it comes to hill reps. I'm a victim of over choice as there are probably 8 different hills I could choose on any given day. Most are fairly steep and take from 30sec to 2min to get up.

The one I chose today is about 1/4 mile from my house and is the longest/steepest of my options. Mostly I chose it because it has next to no traffic on a week day morning. But also I chose it because it looks like this.

This morning was especially awesome because it was drizzling rain and there was this amazing double rainbow that ended at the base of that mountain and it was stunning... It was sort of like running in a fairy tale. Except my legs were burning like mad and much of the run was physically quite uncomfortable. It was quite obvious that I had not put stress like this on my body in a long time!

Main set was:
4x90"
4x60"
4x45"
4x30"
4x15"

I got that main set from Lauren Fleschman- she published it sometime last year as one of her Workouts of the Week and I thought it looked awesome so I saved it in my library. It's a good one for sure b/c as you really start to fatigue, the reps get shorter so it remains manageable.

I took full recovery after each which essentially meant walking at least part way down the hill and waiting until I felt ready to go again- the set took ~40' total and only 16' of that was actual uphill running so you can figure out I recovered at least as long (often longer than) the rep each time. The recovery is an important piece b/c my goal with this set wasn't to make it cardiovascularly challenging- I wanted the muscular load/neuromuscular connection. I discovered I really have no 'pop' and I had to focus hard on form- staying tall through my hips, slight lean forward without bending over, keeping core engaged, taking steps that were short/quick, etc. Those things don't come naturally to me at all so I really had to think about it every time.

As I was finishing up this morning I had the thought that I would like to do this session every week for 3-4 weeks and see how it affects my overall running. Seems like it would have to really help with economy.