Humid Hills

After watching the course video of the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco it has reiterated my thoughts on including hill training once a week in my routine. So yesterday was hill workout day, and it was terrific! I opted to get my run in over lunch in an attempt to beat the heat. On my way into work it was dark, raining, thundering and lightning. By lunch time the rain had cleared, but it was still overcast and really humid. It was about 88% humidity, which for Calgary is a lot - this city is normally dry as a bone. Thanks to the clouds it wasn't super hot out and the humidity felt okay. I ran up to McHugh Bluffs, my favorite hill, and did four repeats, with running on flat ground in between. After I figured I had enough of the hills I ran up and down the stairs there as well, just for a final push for the legs. It was then another mile back to the start on flat ground, so all said and done I got five miles in yesterday. I felt like I pushed myself pretty well and it felt great. My aim for future hill workouts is to cut down the amount that I run on flat ground between repeats so that I can start fitting more ups and downs in.

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The best thing about running over lunch (besides the cooler temps) was that I was also able to fit a yoga class in last night. It was another great session and we did a lot of back bend poses. Boy, oh boy, do I need to work on loosening up my quads. That will certainly help to make some of those poses feel a bit better. My unlimited summer drop in pass ends September 2, so I signed up for a yoga class in the fall. I think I've been to enough sessions now to realize that I really enjoy it and see a lot of benefit out of it. It is definitely good to have a more calming workout to balance out the running and boot camping. Speaking of boot camping - tonight is BBC #4.