Hills and Yoga

What is a hill? That is an interesting question. When I started running, I realized just how many hills there are around my house. Cars tend to make you ignore hills unless they are really big. Around our house, there are very few truly flat sections of road. When I first started running on the track at Lake Forest, I thought it was hilly because of the incline the track is built on. Then when I started running on the road, I realized how flat that track really is relative to our neighborhood. When I ran at the beach the first time, I truly understood the difference between flat and hilly. Now, I actually like hills most of the time. With the Garmin, I found that my pace stays fairly constant over the course of an entire run, but you can definitely see slow downs on the big inclines. No surprise there, but I would like to work on being able to maintain speed up hills. I think that is where I can cut the most time off of my races. Based on my time at the BMW, which was a flat course, I would say that I could shave 30 seconds a mile off my times if I could maintain pace up the hills. We shall see. Right now my focus is really on increasing distance, not speed.

I am going to do a long run tomorrow morning. I want to go for at least 10 and would like to go for 11 or 12 if I have time. October 25 is coming up sooner than I like to think and I want to be ready to at least finish the Spinx Half Marathon. My goal would be under two hours, but I am not sure how realistic that is right now. I am starting to get a little antsy about this race since it is such a huge distance increase. If I can get that distance in a long run in the next three weeks it will make me feel much better. I hope having the Garmin will keep me from going out too fast.

I have decided to try and place my long runs the day after a Yoga class. I have noticed that any run the day after Yoga feels great, so I hope that carries over to a long run.