Hill Sprints

Yesterday was another double day. Cycled 10 miles with two hills in the morning. Then we did hill sprints with the run group in the evening. I did a double day on Tuesday as well, cycling the same route in the morning, then doing a 4 mile easy run in the evening.

Anyway, lets talk about hill sprints. The format was warm up, 10x20sec up the hill FAST, mostly walking back down, then cool down. I need to figure out a better way to capture my data. I probably should use the lap button so that I can see the pace each time up the hill, but I didn't. Instead, I do have a graph of pace by distance.

You can see the warm up ahead of the sprints, then the each sprint up the hill, and the walk back down and the cool down at the end. You can also see that I tried to pick up my pace at the end of the cool down (much to Coach's dismay) so that I had the feeling of finishing strong.

I have to admit, hill sprints are one of my FAVORITE running workouts. Somehow, even though I am way back of the pack when running on flat surfaces with the group, I am solidly middle of the pack on hills. Not sure why that is. Maybe it is more a measure of strength than speed? Sporttracks summarized my run with the following stats:

• Walking: 23:04min/mi for 0.46 mi
• Jogging: 11:00 min/mi for 1.54 mi
• Running: 7:62 min/mi for 0.79 mi

I was clearly pushing it up the hills and my legs are reminding of that this morning. A recovery walk is on the agenda. And if I make time, I think I'll go for a swim as well.

Happy Friday everyone!