The hills have legs

I have a new enemy, and its name is “the hill at La Salle” park. Okay, I don’t know if that’s its official name or anything. But I’ve chosen to nickname it “Hell.”

Yes, I’ve entered a new stage of training commonly known as hill training, or hill repeats. It’s been part of the schedule for our 10K running clinic for two weeks now. I, unfortunately, had to miss the first week, so I e-mailed the instructor for directions to do it on my own.

He gave me some guidance, telling me to go down to La Salle Park (a park in Aldershot – a lovely area of Burlington right on the Hamilton border), and run for about 18 minutes at an easy pace to warm up. Then, pick one of the big hills down there (the area going down to the lake is quite hilly), and run up it three times, at about 85 per cent of my maximum heart rate. Then, cool down by running another 18 minutes.

Off I went to the park, which is actually a good 20-25 minute drive from my house. I dutifully followed the instructions, choosing what I THOUGHT was a good hill. It was probably about 100 meters or so, and very steep. I ran my 18 minutes, did my three hill repeats, and did the cool down. I happily reported back to the instructor that I had finished!

So this week, it was time for hills again – only this time, we were to do four repeats. I was very, very close to skipping the class. I hadn’t been feeling the greatest, I’d just had my flu shot that day and I found myself making excuses.

I decided to go anyway – if for no other reason than I really didn’t feel like going all the way down to the park by myself for more hill training. I met the rest of the class in the parking lot, and the instructor gave us our little weekly talk. (This time, it was on goal setting.)

Then he said, “Okay, for those of you who missed last week, here’s where we’re running.” He proceeded to map out the route.

Uh oh. It turns out, I did that hill training completely wrong. The “hill” I chose? NOTHING compared to Mt. Everest on the other side of the park. It was at least 400 meters long – almost ½ a kilometer!

I was terrified. I did the warm up run with the people in the clinic I enjoy running with (we call ourselves the “slow” group!) Then, it was unavoidable. It was time for the hill.

I knew we were supposed to push ourselves, and, quite frankly, on our “easy” group runs, I don’t push myself that hard. Our instructor tells us that for the easy distance runs, we should be able to hold a conversation while running. I take that advice to heart. Last Sunday, we did our first 10K group run, and it was fantastic. I chatted with another girl in my group the whole way, and we took the 10K nice and easy.

But hill training is different. It’s meant to strengthen your legs, and boost your cardio performance. And since I haven’t been spinning much lately, I haven’t been pushing my heart rate up there like I should.

So I started my hill at a speed to get my heart rate up. (It turns out, I’m a bit faster than I think, as I quickly pulled away from the slow group.) It killed. My legs were burning, my breathing was heavy and it took every ounce of effort to get up that hill. The instructor was halfway up the hill, and he ran up to the top with me, shouting advice.

“Head up! Shorten your stride!” he bellowed. (Easy for him to say… he’s something like 5’5”. At 5’11”, with long legs, your stride’s always going to be pretty long.) “That’s it… you can do it… go right to the stop sign!”

Really? Right to the stop sign? But that’s so far away! Finally, I made it to the sign. I felt like puking. I’ve never been much for sprinting or speed work (I know I’m more of an endurance runner than a speed runner), and I felt awful.

“Good job!” the instructor chortled. “Now get back down that hill – three more to go!”

I made it through all four repeats. The good news is, they didn’t get any harder after that first one. The bad news? They didn’t get easier either. But I finished it, and set out on my cool down run. I actually took that run a lot faster than my warm up run – mostly because I really, really wanted to finish my run!

Finish it I did – and I will go back for another round next week. We’re moving up to five repeats next week, so let’s hope I can make it through that.

I’m really enjoying this clinic. I’m learning a lot about running, and getting some great exercise. For one thing, I’ve learned how one can live off Halloween candy for two weeks and still LOSE a pound. Just run 30-35 kilometers a week! (And I’m not kidding… so far, I’ve run 27K this week, and I still have a 6K run left today.)

What is ahead for training? The distances are steadily increasing. We do another 10K practice run tomorrow, and one of our weekly runs moves up to 8K. In the next few weeks, will increase our hill repeats, introduce speed repeats (somehow, I don’t like the sound of that…) and increase our longest distance to 13K. (Yes, I know this is a 10K clinic, but apparently that’s how they do this.)

We also haven’t chosen a goal race yet. There is no 10K race in Burlington in December, so we have to make some decisions. Our instructor thinks they might just do one for our class at the Running Room, but time us and make it official and everything. I hope they decide soon – I’d like to plan the month of December!

Happy trails…