Hills

I love hills. Said no runner ever.

I was recently looking over the route for the Maritime Race Weekend half marathon. (Which is in 51 days by the way!) The route is mostly flat, but has 3 uphill sections – at KMs 3, 7 and 16. Because the route is partly an out-and-back, I at least get to run downhill for the last 3 km! The highest elevation is 40m - I have no idea what that means, but it looks bad on the elevation graph.

 

So I've decided to add in some hill training to my regular routine.  There is a hill behind Liam's school that is steep, but not too long.  I get an easy 1km warm up on my way to the hill and then my plan is to run up it then walk back down to recover and repeat.  The first time I tried it I only made it up the hill twice, before almost throwing up on my shoes.  It took me 3 weeks before I was brave enough to try it again.  This time I made it up 4 times before deciding that I couldn't do it again.

When I plugged this hill into MapMyRun to find out the elevation, I was a bit concerned to find out it's only 33m, so not as high as what I'll be doing during the half.  But I figure the climb on the actual route is a bit more gradual before it gets to the peak (except maybe that first bump....) and I won't be repeating it over and over again. So even though my training hill isn't AS steep, I still think it's a good place to start, especially since I have avoided hills like the plague for the past three years.

elevation of my training hill, repeated 4 times

The picture doesn't really do the hill justice, but that sucker is steep!

One day I'll run up this hill without even thinking about it.  Till then, I keep training.