Trashed

On the way to town for the kids' basketball games on Saturday, I had too much time to think. I haven't been able to nail down my next race so my weekend long runs have been progressively getting longer without any real idea of what I'm working toward. I know that I want to run half marathons on trails with hills. Since, I've worked up to 12 miles, it seems sort of unnecessary to just keep adding miles although I do expect to run some longer runs in the next few weeks. So the idea of running harder miles presented itself. I know that I can cover 12 miles. Why not make the doing a bit more challenging? Where can I go to copy the sort of run that I would have if I were racing at Cheyenne Mountain? Well, the hill from our house is about .73 miles of not gentle uphill. What if I do twelve miles of hill repeats? Now the plans that I've looked at do include hill repeats and long runs, but usually not in the same workout. I set my sights and started out with a run up the hills with two sons, a husband, and a dog. There may have been more snowball throwing and dodging than running, but we covered the miles with a short conversation with the neighbor thrown in. The next repeat was also run with the husband and dog, and we made a bit better time, but the real work began on the third trip up the hill. The next five repeats were a test of setting my legs, arms, and lungs to a rhythm that would get me through the long miles ahead. I ran all five up hills in less than 10 minutes and all five repeats in 17 minutes or less. The last was my fastest at 15.07 for a mile and a half. I did the last one with the husband as a walking cooldown. When we got back he headed in to pick up his game with the kids, and I made supper. It wasn't until I crawled into bed that night that I noticed the aching muscles in my legs. They were trashed. I did feel like the workout was a good test of my ability to set my sights on the goal and manage my output of energy so that I could maintain my forward progress the entire time. I don't think that I've been able to do that often before especially in races, especially and not hold too much back. I'm very good at talking my self out of putting out enough at the beginning and having too much left. All in all, it was a good test. I enjoyed the challenge and had fun on the way.