As inspired by George, I did some simms hill repeats today since its close to home. And it felt really good. I started out REALLY slow. My left hip had some minor soreness, probably from the weekends efforts report. But it warmed up after about 2 miles and felt fine. Here are my splits for the hill repeats (the hill section I ran is .48 miles): 5:26 up (11:22 pace) – 3:45 down (7:52 pace) 4:36 up (9:37 pace) – 3:33 down (7:25 pace) 3:30 up (7:18 pace) – 2:37 down (5:24 pace) - Kind of funny to see my uphill pace drop 2 minutes per mile each lap. I’m sure that last lap though was approaching the limit of how fast I can run up that hill because my heart rate was in the mid 170′s at the top. I’m sure I could run it faster, but probably not much at this point. I took the first lap really easy both ways, just to continue my warm up really. After each lap I just rested for about 15 seconds grabbing a drink of water then headed back up. The 2nd lap I decided to put forth moderate effort both ways. But I didn’t pushed a bit harder on the uphill than the down. Then the 3rd lap I wanted to push it really hard. It felt cool to run up the hill faster than I had just run down it. To look down at my pace and see it in the low 7′s surprised me, but I just kept at it and was able to hold it pretty steady to the top. Then I went all out on the down hill too. My mile pace for that total mile up/down the hill was 6:21/mile. Which I was pretty pleased with considering its a 190 foot ascent over 1/2 mile. Not sure if I could have repeated that last repeat time again though. I think sometime I’ll do that again and see if I can 2 or more laps at the pace of my last lap. Then I just ran easy 9 min pace the couple miles back home. I really enjoyed the progressive pushing workout.
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