Slo-Jo: Hill Hell

Goal distance: 7 miles

Actual distance: 3.75 miles

Heartrate: 1 billion

Glasses of wine last night: 0 (Seriously!)

Today was supposed to be 7 miles of hills. Here is what the plan says:

"Run on the hilliest terrain you can find, with a variety of grades. Try to maintain the same effort level on both the uphills and the down hills."

Got it. I took myself to a desert mountain preserve park, thinking I would just run around it as there are lots of rolling hills, some bigger hills, and an amphitheater where I could run some stairs. I thought I’d run around for an hour and a half or so and do hills until I got to seven miles.

Why run hills? Apparently it increases leg-muscle power, improves fitness, and uses the muscles in a different way than running on flats. Another website says hill sprints increase the efficiency of the stride, “enabling the runner to cover more ground with less energy.” That seems like a good thing. Or as Runner's World (our favorite resource here at Running on Wine) summed it up, “If you want to improve strength and speed, run hills.” 

This is something I need, because as we know, I am trying to move at a less glacial pace in my runs. The Runner’s World article I just linked to has a detailed description of the different types of hill workouts you can do for different benefits; I won’t repeat them here. As a highlight, it involves words like “slow-twitch muscle fiber” and incorporating “bounding.” Who doesn’t want to be the sort of runner who bounds up hills? It’s like being a superhero! 

My first thought while starting out was that my legs were pretty tired. I had run the two previous days. Also, I did a leg workout with weights yesterday (trying to incorporate more weight training into the regimen). This did not bode well for a seven-mile hill run. So even within the first mile, I knew I might have to cut it short, but wanted to do what I could.

I ran around the preserve, with lots of short rolling hills. Then I ran around the butte to the amphitheater and jogged up the steps three times. Heart rate: somewhere between high and exploding. Then I kept going, found a long hill, and ran up that three times. I felt like I had been working out hard--but I had only run two miles at this point. Two miles? And I have to get to seven?! I found my mind drifting to sadists, and wondering if they had written this half-marathon plan that called for seven freaking miles of hills. Perhaps the sadists had moved on from whips and chains--so passé--to devising training plans for runners. “Hey, let’s draft a really impossible ‘training’ plan! I bet idiots will actually try to do this!”

(If you type "sadist" into Google Images, you find, perhaps not surprisingly, some creepy stuff. I liked this denim-suit wearing guy though. It looks like someone has fallen off his motorcycle in the background, which doesn't seem particularly sadistic. Maybe Denim-Suit pushed him off.)

Despite my growing suspicion that my training plan had been devised by very bad people, I decided to run another loop around the preserve and back to the amphitheater, where I did not exactly bound up the stairs. But I climbed them another three times.

At the end, I told myself, go run that long hill again. GO RUN THAT HILL AGAIN. But the sun was beating on me at this point, and if I went the other direction from the hill, it would be shady. I decided I would rather have shade than swelter up a big hill, so more rolling hills for me rather than long hill repeats.

(See all those places where the pace goes to zero? That's when I was stopping to gasp for air. Hills are hard.)

Towards the end, I was definitely meeting the goal of maintaining the same speed on the uphills and downhills because I had to walk them. I kept thinking, hey, time to run! And the body kept walking. I finally convinced myself to run the last .75 miles back to the car, mainly because it was mostly downhill. I do love a good downhill.

To sum up—did not run seven, but am nonetheless proud of a good training run. Bounding off to work now.

[Update: After reading Toe-Shoes Tina's post, I have concluded I totally could have done seven miles of hills, had it not been 90 degrees outside! Will test theory next January. -SJ]