King of the Hill?

I ran five miles at lunch yesterday. Since I am still not acclimated to the heat and humidity, I didn't break any land speed records. When I got home last night, young son's baseball game had been cancelled and Lee was heading off on a run before dinner. I was left with an unexpected 45 minute hole in my schedule. What to do with that time?

I could have cut the grass, but it was too wet. I could have taken a nap, but my father in law was at the house waiting on dinner and watching the news and don't want to look lazy in front of him... :) I could have sat down and written a blog entry, but I didn't have much to blog about. So that left me with no choice but to run a hill workout. I have never done that, but I have made some noise about adding speed work and this seemed to be as good of a day to that as any other.

Next I needed to find a hill. Well, I looked out my front window and saw a steep hill that is about 1/10 of a mile long. That should work. As I walked to the bottom of the hill while setting my Garmin for the interval workout, I tried to decide how many intervals I should run. I didn't want to overdo my first hill workout, but I didn't want to look too much like a wimp either. I settled on 10 intervals of 1/10 mile up and 1/10 recovery down. That would be two miles added to my daily total and be a good introduction to hill workouts.

As I stood at the bottom of the hill, I began to realize that 1/10 of a mile looked a lot longer that I had imagined. Before I suffered a bout of paralysis by analysis, I pressed the start button and started sprinting (well, it seemed like a sprint to me anyway) up the hill. I started hearing some beeping as I approached the top and slowed down to look at my Garmin to make sure it wasn't about to self destruct. It was only the warning that I was approaching the end. Finally, I heard the 'end beep'. I look down and see the screen on my wrist telling me to recover for 1/10 of a mile. Buddy let me tell you, I took advantage of every step of recovery. At the bottom of the hill the beeping started again, warning me it was almost time to turn around and repeat the process.

Beeps are a funny thing. When you don't expect them, they can be alarming... Is it a fire? Is a truck about to back into me? Is someone making popcorn in the microwave? When you expect them, the reaction may be positive... I'm almost at the top of the hill... I hear the beeping. Or, the reaction can be negative.... What? I'm almost at the bottom of the hill and it is time to turn around and run back up the hill like an idiot?

10 times I went up the hill and 10 times I went down the hill. In the end, my legs were shaking as I approached the crest. My neighbors were amused and confused. Or maybe they were just amused and thinking that I was confused. Either way, when I was done I was happy. Happy to be done and happy to have finally done some sort of speed work. As bad as it was, it wasn't as bad as I had imagined. As much as it hurt at times, it also felt good. Most, ok ALL, of my running experience to date has been distance running on the road. This felt different. I don't want to say it was fun, but it was different. So different, that I think I will try it again next week.