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.

Trying to Stay Awake...

I am excruciatingly tired right now. It could be due to the lingering fumes in my office from when they replaced a window yesterday (up on the 30th floor...you couldn't pay me enough money to do that). Or it could be a byproduct of speed work and post-lunch digestion. Anyhow, in an attempt to avoid landing snoring and face first on my keyboard I thought I would quickly tell you about my last two days of workouts while I wait for the caffeine to kick in.

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Wednesday:

So coach has mixed my schedule up a bit and Wednesday is now an optional running day. 30 minutes of easy running while trying to stay in zone 2. I had someplace to be at 6 pm so I headed out to the river over my lunch break. It was absolutely amazing outside! We've been spoiled with some fantastic fall weather lately so it was great to get outside. My legs were actually feeling a bit tired (so maybe I didn't sand bag my spin class quite so badly as I had thought?), but my heart rate stayed pretty low so I just hung in there and tried to ignore the tired legs. 3.03 miles. Good stuff.

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Thursday - Swim:

Swimming has been feeling pretty....ugh...lately. I want to love swimming. But it just isn't there. Maybe that's because I'm always swimming so early in the morning and I'm not loving the waking up at 4:30 am to make it to class on time. But today I really wanted to put forward a good attitude and a good swim. The class was pretty empty and I got a lane to myself and I worked hard to concentrate on what I could be doing better, then put it into action. When I climbed out of the pool I actually felt like I had gotten somewhere.

And in the vain of "wow, triathlon is a small world" I was chatting with one of the ladies after class while getting ready for work. I asked where she worked and it turns out she works with my sister-in-law T! T has told me about her - how she raced Ironman Canada this year and placed well enough to go to Kona, then apparently had an amazing race at Kona as well. Crazy coincidence!

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Thursday - Speed:

Hill workouts have been replaced with speed intervals now. I had 4 x 3 min intervals on the schedule. I warmed up for 15 minutes, then started in on the intervals. I ran the first one at a 7:42/mi pace but I just couldn't hold the other three below the 8:00/mi mark. Those came in at 8:04/mi, 8:05/mi and 8:07/mi so all pretty consistent. Afterwards I cooled down and finished up with a total 4.89 mi of running.

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Alright, the caffeine has kicked in, so back to work!

Easy Running Defined

Karen posted some food for thought on her blog about easy running. She's currently teaching a Learn to Run clinic and someone asked her "When does it become easy?" Considering that I am still struggling with having more bad runs than good runs right now it has definitely made me ponder. Here are some questions she posed:

• What does easy running mean to you? My definition of easy running is the feeling that you could keep running forever. You are happy to be outside, you marvel at the scenery and you don't even notice what your legs are doing and your breathing is effortless. All of a sudden you stop, look down at your watch and marvel at how fast you've been running or how far you've gone because you barely even noticed.
• Has it ever been so? Yes - the Nike Women's Half Marathon in San Francisco felt relatively easy to me. The weather was perfect, the scenery was amazing and I couldn't believe how fast I was running and that I didn't feel the need to stop and walk. I've had training runs that felt that way too, but it has never quite come together as well as it did that day in San Francisco.
• What is an easy run for you? There isn't necessarily a definition of distance or time. Sometimes a 2 miler feels worse than a 10 miler. The greatest realization for me what when I knew I could run out and finish 6 miles any day of the week, where as back when I started 6 miles seemed like an insurmountable goal.
• When did it happen for you, how, and why? I'm not sure I can answer this. After running for awhile you start to realize that every time you go out it feels just a bit better than the last time. Then the next run may be a stonker, so just because you finally experience an easy run doesn't mean that every run is going to feel that way.
• Is easy running a good thing? Yes, definitely so! Once you experience that runner's high I think it pulls you in to keep you coming back for more. It would be pretty demotivating if it felt like running continuously sucked for weeks/months/years on end. What would be the motivation to keep going, to keep doing it? I think you have to have faith that when you first start out it will take you awhile before you like it, but one day it will happen.
• If not, do you ever hope to experience an easy run? Boy, do I ever hope I go back to feeling like runs are easy (or easier) on a consistent basis. I miss that feeling and I want it back...

What are your thoughts? Feel free to comment here, or hop on over to Karen's site to let her know.