Making Friends with the Hill(s)

A few runs to catch up on.  Thursday I did the '4 mile' run in Tampa, where I did my run/walk for forty minutes.  I got out around 8am, but that one was tough.  The last half of it was in no way fun.  The good news is that I did complete it, though, so I got through what was actually the worst day of training in the heat (it was the longest session).  Then I packed up the car and went to Pittsburgh, where the weather is far more amenable, but not the terrain.

These hills are killer.  Killer.  For Saturday's run, I did four miles again over mostly not too bad hills, although there was still an awful lot of them.  My Garmin doesn't cooperate with the computer that I brought but I look forward to seeing just how much up- and downhill I did--the Garmin tracks your elevation during your runs.  There was one particularly steep one and I decided to count my footfalls to get through it (one of my favorite tricks), but I almost died by the end and had to walk.  This taught me to go more slowly on steep hills.  Lesson learned.

Yesterday's run was supposed to be a six-mile one, but I did wind up walking.  Again, I blame the hills.  I did learn from the day before and didn't energetically tackle anything, but during one long walk around 4.5 miles, I just couldn't do it.  It's hard to explain, but I felt my legs were just....tired.  Which makes sense, but is still annoying.  The rest of the run became a real test with some alternate running and walking.  Around 5.5 miles (with another steep hill on the way), I decided to alternate with 0.05 miles of walking followed by 0.1 of running.  This went okay, although it was still remarkably difficult and painful.  I did manage to run out the last 0.2 miles.  Barely.  To finish, I had to walk up one final hill to get to the house and this actually required me to come up with mental encouragement.  To walk.  Up a hill.  Are you starting to get the idea about these hills?

I was knocked out this morning too.  I blame the hills since I've been feeling pretty good on the long runs over the past few weeks, so I seriously doubt that this was caused by adding one mile.

Today is a day off, then tomorrow is hill training (ha!).  I promise a picture then of the ridiculousness that I am coping with here.  Today I also looked for some tips on hill training and found a video by Coach Jenny.  Coach Jenny recommends that you start by making friends with the hill.  I want to be friends with the hills.  I really do.  But we're still learning how to get used to each other.