The Hills are Aliiiiiive!

On Thursday night I attended a Women's Running event at Runner's Need in Victoria hosted by the editor, a life coach, personal trainer and a physiotherapist. The main focus of the event was to discuss motivation and training techniques and thankfully the crowd were all relatively new runners, training for half marathons, so we all had very similar questions.

My main challenge at the moment is getting my pace up when running on my own. I find it incredibly hard to push the speed element of the training without someone else's slightly faster pace to mirror. Interval training I can manage, but its the longer stamina runs that end up falling back to 11:30 min miles, rather that the 10:30 I'm aiming for.

The feedback from the experts then was to give hill training a go. Great for stamina, a form of interval training and also adds in an element of strength training for the old legs. Clearly I am thrilled about this. Hills - not a fan. Intervals - make me want to vomit. Fantastic.

The plan they recommended looks like this:

• Warm up for 10 minutes regular tempo
• 1 minute or thereabouts hard up hill 
• Recover on the down hill
• Repeat for 15 minutes (with a 2 minute recovery jog if needed half way)
• Cool down 10 minute tempo run

This looked pretty doable actually and lucky for me there's a pretty killer hill about a mile away from my flat, just enough time to warm up then.

I set off in my brand spanking new running kit (discount sale at the seminar! I am a sucker for a deal) feeling pretty positive about the session. One minute up hill - pfffft! Easy.

Walk? We ran!

Stella contemplates the hill

Stella sets the pace

And so we hit the hill. One minute up hill, fine. I've done that hill a hundred times before. But just the one time per run. One minute up that hill six times over? Not so fine. Although very amusing for passers by, and very confusing for Stella the Dog who actually sat down at one point. Clearly the hill even got to her.

Really pleased I managed it and what a way to clear the better part of 5kms and get the heart rate hitting the threshold. HELL YES! (I say this after I collapsed in a heap on my kitchen floor)

Four to the floor

Stella in Recovery Mode = Hiding