The hills are alive with the sound of my feet

Running hills is unavoidable around here, but it is easy to skip the harder ones. This summer I've pretty much been avoiding the big hills. Occasionally I have intentionally run a few, but I've gotten in a bad mind frame -- there are no hills at the beach, so why run them? That's such a bad way of thinking. I also haven't been running the hills very hard when I do get to them. I know that hills are beneficial and I know that just in general my runs here will help me in the flatness of the Rock 'n' Roll Half. But really running hills can go a long way.

Today, for the first time in seemingly forever, I did three hill repeats. In my neighborhood, there are three consecutive dead-end streets with progressively longer hills. Each one is a little longer than a tenth of a mile from the bottom to the top. I started with the easiest, then progressed to the hardest. Then I did the opposite with the hardest first. Instead of casually running them, like I have when I've done them before, I ran them hard. I concentrated on getting my knees up; I moved my arms faster to help me get up the hills; I kept my head up; and through it all I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest.

It felt great. I didn't want to overdo it since I haven't done repeats in so long, but I made sure the next half-mile or so of my run was steadily uphill in my neighborhood. My neighborhood is pretty interesting -- I call it relatively flat, but it's actually uphill from my house to the main road. The main streets in my neighborhood run down toward the James River, although I'm still a good distance from the river. All in all, it's much hillier than any course at Virginia Beach will be.


Workouts since last post-
Aug. 18: Walk - 1.8; Weights
Aug. 19 - Walk - 1.1; Run - 4.4