Every Run is a Great Run!

Nice to see ya back on the blog!! Nice miles and pace too!! Sweet!!! Good work :)

Interesting about your findings with the steep hill sprints. I was doing mine mid-run but found that caused 2 problems: 1 - my legs were toast by the end of the sprints, and I had 3+ miles left to run, and 2 - I tended to run the last 3 miles much faster than I should've, given that it was an easy day. Why do you feel like running them first is the way to go?

Kellie - thanks! And good luck at Boston coming up soon!

Dale - I had been doing the hill sprints right at the tail end of usually 8-10 mile hill run and finding my legs were already tired from the hills so I wasn't able to do them justice. It occurs to me I might be better off doing the hill sprints on days when the rest of the miles are flat - I maybe overdoing it with the hills doing both a hilly run and hill sprints.

Today I did them about 3 miles into the run. I was tired after the sprints but after a brief walk and then running nice and easy it felt better than when I was doing the sprints at mile 8.

I think one other thing is I probably don't do these hill "sprints" quite like their supposed to be done. One result of my getting old and dealing with lingering high-hamstring issues is that my sprint gear is just about non-existent. I'm sure anyone watching me do them would use other words to describe them besides "sprinting" ("lumbering" or "staggering" come to mind) :)

When I was doing mine midrun, I usually had 3-4 downhill miles left. Maybe that's why my legs complained so much, because of the downhills.

If it makes you feel any better, when I first started them, doing sets of 8, 1-4 were sluggish, 5-6 were okay, and 7-8 were lame cause my legs were shot. After doing them for several months now, I can literally feel the strength difference. I'm doing sets of 15 now, with 1-2 still being a tad sluggish, 3-11/12 being really strong, and 12/13-15 starting to fade. Plus, they've kept my gimp hip issues at bay. I'm a believer.