Absolutely beautiful morning to run today, 60 degrees with low humidity. That probably helped with some of the improvement over last week’s hill repeats when it was 67 degrees and humid, but still it looks to me like I saw a huge jump today. I’m very very happy about what I saw this morning.
On the first climb of the hill, I just tried to match how the effort felt last week. I also concentrated on getting good knee lift and kicking my heels up towards my butt. I was going to be happy if I saw a split time like last week’s. Today’s first repeat came in at 1:20.67, 4 seconds faster than my fastest repeat of last week at 1:24.82. Okay, I say, also looking at my watch and seeing the heart rate a few beats below where it was last week — although I really feel that’s very much because of the cooler weather.
So I jogged back down and came up again. I could kind of feel that I hung back a bit on the second repeat and it came in at 1:23.87, still faster than any of the repeats last week. But I reminded myself to give a good strong effort and not get lazy.
Third repeat I crack the 1:20 mark — 1:19.70. Nice. Still making sure my form is good. Go back down and let’s do it one last time.
Fourth repeat, good solid feeling effort, very much like the third and it’s a time of 1:20.23. So other than the second repat, all my repeats are inside of 1 second of each other. But I wasn’t going to pack it in just yet, have to finish up with that mailbox sprint where on Tuesday I set a new record with 45.92. I didn’t know if I’d be able to better that today, last week after the hill repeats it resulted in my slowest sprint of the week.
Today, a pickup truck was passing me as I hit the split button to start the split. Maybe that helped inspire me to really go after it. Whatever it was, I found a new gear this morning. I’m going up and it feels like I’m flying. I’m running like I’ve never run before. I begin to feel a bit flagged as I’m nearing the top, but then I dig down and find that last little bit of extra to close it hard. I hit stop.
After a bit, I look at the split time for the sprint. 41.39 seconds. Holy shit. A three and a half second improvement? Wow. I’ve got a new gear in my legs. I think I’ve got hill repeats to thank for it.
