Hurts so Good

Last night I had 5 - 2:00 hill repeats on the schedule and I wasn't sure how the legs were going to feel after my bike ride the night before. I settled into my warm up and things were feeling good so I knew I was ready to attack those hills. I ran down to the same spot as last week. I think the incline is good enough so that I work hard, and the hill is long enough so that I have no problems getting the full 2:00 minutes in running up. There was another lady out there running hill repeats as well, although farther up the hill. I used her as motivation as I was imagining that I was trying to catch her. I set up my workout in the Garmin Training Centre again, and it worked out really well. Here are the details on the repeats:

1. 0.21 mi - 9:41/mi
2. 0.21 mi - 9:25/mi
3. 0.21 mi - 9:39/mi
4. 0.20 mi - 10:10/mi
5. 0.20 mi - 9:43/mi

My quads were burning on every single one of those repeats. I kept saying different things to myself to talk it through. Things like: this is good for you, it is making you stronger...come on, suck it up, you can do anything for 2 minutes...singing bits and pieces of John Mellencamp's "Hurts so Good"... What do you tell yourself to get you up those hills?

I finished strong on the repeats, then set back home for my cool down run. All said and done I covered 5 miles. Once back home it was time for a quickie strength work out, some abs, and some stretching. Then time for dinner! I've been planning ahead to cook at home more, and to make sure I'm getting tons of fruits and veggies in my diet. While I was out I had some chicken breasts marinating in some soy sauce, hoi sin sauce, garlic, hot sauce, five spice powder and pepper. I modified this recipe slightly by cutting back the oil, and leaving out the water, onion and oyster sauce (mostly because the stuff in my pantry had an expiration date of September 2007...time to throw it out maybe). I grilled it up, along with some zucchini, eggplant, red pepper and a portabello mushroom. Good stuff!