I didn't go this morning and I didn't go yesterday. I've been beat lately. Not sure what is going on. Maybe calorie deficient, maybe something else, I don't know. If it is calories, I need to figure out how to eat enough healthy food to keep my energy levels up. I don't want to just make up the difference with crap. You can't fuel the machine with garbage, right? At any rate, I was getting grouchy - or so my wife told me - so I went for a run. I've noticed the last few times I've been out that I am slow. I'm not turtle slow, but I'm not fast either. I know, because I have read and been told over and over again, that to get fast you have to use your fast twitch muscles. Typically, this is done on a track with some 200's or something. I don't have a track and I'm not that keen on running on flat surfaces. I decided that I should do something that I've seen Kilian Jornet do in this video. As I understand it, the purpose of this type of a run is to make you faster up hill by firing all the fast twitch muscles. The advantage of this, as opposed to running on a track, is that it simulates the type of running that I plan to be doing on the same surface. So, I found a hill pretty close to my house that is pretty steep and sandy. It's 80 feet of gain in .05 of a mile. My plan was to do 5 sprints up the hill and see how I felt at that point. I didn't make it. The first attempt I went out as fast as I could, legs straining, lungs burning, heart beating out of my chest. For all my efforts I made it about half way up, 47 feet, in 36 seconds which is an 18 minute mile. That was my fastest attempt. I stopped at 47 feet because my legs literally couldn't go any farther. I also timed my downhill time, as that is just as important in trail running as the uphill portion and equally as hard on the legs. I'm better at the down than the up but I'm not as fast as some people I know. My downhill was pretty consistent at about 15.5 minutes per mile. The rest of my uphill runs were as follows: 39', 29 seconds; 40', 29 seconds. Instead of 5 I got 3, and that was all my legs had in them. I climbed back to the top of the hill, which is actually the firebreak road, and sat down to take the rocks out of my shoes. That's the downside of running in sand I guess. Then I figured that I should put in some more relaxed miles to cool down. Even though the course is pretty even across the top, I was faster after the sprints than before them, even with the tired legs. I felt a bit like I was floating. My splits on the way back, which again is up and down hill but almost exactly the same as it was on the first part of the run, was minutes faster on ever mile. I'm taking that as a good sign. So I've decided I'm going to add this in to my runs on a regular basis. I'll see if I can get a mile or more in sprinting up that hill in a single session. That will be the goal. According to Brad Hudson, hill sprints should be added into your runs regularly so I'm assuming it will be alright as long as I get 2+ miles in before the hill sprints and some sort of cool down after. | 