A Pyramid of Hills

On Thursday I met up with Kelly for our hill workout.  We both had hill pyramids on our schedule – mine were 1-2-3-3-2-1 minute intervals, Kelly’s were 2-3-4-3-2 minute intervals.  Even though Kelly’s workout involved more minutes of climbing  I wanted to run her workout.  The big question was, could we find a 4 minute hill in downtown Calgary??  That was why I was keen to run her workout! 

We ran a 15 minute warm up around the river and wound up at the base of the Curling Club hill in time for the start of our 2 minute hill.  It was busy out!  We ran up the hill, finishing right at the top as our two minutes were up.  Now where to go for 3 minutes?  We continued on towards Center Street, running down the bridge.  We started near the bottom of the bridge and just about ran out of hill before our three minutes were up.  For four minutes we started on the pathway below the bridge, ran up the bridge and on to a very steep road.  We crested the road at 3.5 minutes so we stopped and the top and did squats for our last 30 seconds.  On our final 2 minute repeat I challenged Kelly to race up the bridge and we pushed ourselves hard!  I love hill workouts.  They are so rewarding and you know that you’ve worked hard when you are done.  Kelly and I really motivate each other too and I know we work harder together than I would do on my own.

Friday was actually supposed to be a rest day…but confession…I had missed a couple of workouts on Wednesday that I wanted to accomplish.  The first was a swim workout, called a swim golf mixer.  I did a 500 m warm up then ran through two 50 m swim golf sets.  I went into the drill set – more arm lead side kicks, head lead side kicks and 6 kick rolls.  These drills seem to show up in a lot of my workouts.  I think Angie is really trying to make sure I’m rolling from side to side during my swim stroke!  I then moved into a 400 m set of moderate and fast paced sets and finished with another two 50 m swim golf sets.  My score only changed by a point or two but I’m beginning to get the feel of things to do to decrease my swim stroke.  Later in the afternoon I went out in the glorious sunshine for a quick and easy 40 minute ride.  I’m getting the feel for my bike and so far the fit is very comfortable.  My way out was primarily uphill but it wasn’t feeling nearly as hard as I remembered.  When I turned around I realized that part of that may have been because I had a tail wind!  The ride was just a simple one through some neighborhoods looking at some fancy houses.  Lots of other cyclists were out there.

And with that, I’ve gotta get going…2 hour long run on tap!  Hope everyone is having a great weekend.