Hitting the Hills

On Wednesday I planned on doing a track workout, but there was a field hockey game on the infield, so I switched plans and did a hill workout instead.  There's a grass hill not far from the track so I headed over with my training partner of the day, Todd.  He loves hills, so he was totally game for the switch.  The grass hill was great, taking just over 1:40 to go the distance.  It started with a steep little incline, then kept rising, but at a much more modest rate.  After reaching the top, we jogged down and started over again.  This time on the descent, we were met by a not-so-friendly dog.  Hair raised, teeth showing, and growling...not very friendly.  We attempted another one and were met part-way up the hill by this same guy and realized it was not going to be feasible to try and tempt fate, especially since he was right in our path.  We decided it was going to be more productive (and safer) to move to elsewhere.  As a side note, I used to be pretty scared of dogs while running--as a result of being bit by one during a run--but I am not as worried as I used to be.  So, this switch was realistic and not totally fear based.

We jogged over to a nearby road and tested out it's hill.  It took about 77 seconds to run and was a great workout.  As I was running, I was reminded that as I return from my layoff, I wanted to make sure my muscle strength was brought along in-line with my aerobic system, in order to prevent the type of injuries that I seemed to be incurring.  What better way to work on my muscle strength than hills.  I'm going to try and make this a regular part of my training.  I used to do quite a bit of hill running and found that I responded well to it.  So, hills, hills, hills it is.