Day 53: Culver City hills

Tonight was my first Wednesday practice, and we tackled hills.

Hill training is annoying and painful BUT I can speak from experience when I say it makes a huge difference in strength over the course of training.

We met at Culver City park and worked out in four segments:

1) Warm up - about a mile down and back, with four 10-second pick ups on the return leg. Pick ups are, as you might expect when you pick up the pace for whatever the duration of the pick up.

2) "Triple Crown" - Run to the top of the hill with a strong effort, recover on the way down - x3

3) "Three Minute Monster" - Run uphill 30 seconds, recover downhill, run 60 seconds uphill,  recover downhill, run 90 seconds uphill - try not to keel over - recover downhill...All without stopping and at 80% max effort.

4) Cool down run / walk / stretch.

I made it...in the back of the pack the whole way, but that's okay. I'm working on taming my speed envy. Shins felt good which is important after all the downhills where you can really bang them up. I focused a lot on keep my stride short and quick and light. No clunking down the hill for me.

Tomorrow is a rest day. I barely know what to do when I get to sleep in these day - feels a little weird.

Day 53: 3.6 miles
season mileage to date: 103.6 miles