First Uphill and then downhill

On my refrigerator I put a big sticky note saying "Boston or bust". Personally, I am hoping for a big day at Boston and not a bust. Funny, it seems silly to worry about the work it takes to do something and then later worry if you have done enough or maybe worse too much.

Thus, it is the perfect reason why every runner should have a training plan whether they create it their self or they have a coach create one for them.

Over the last few weeks, I have been introducing tempo runs slowly back into my training schedule. Thursday, it was time to take it a step further and add in a hill workout.

Now, most of us are familiar with hill workouts. We run up the hill hard as we can and then recover on the way down. Well, my hill workouts this spring have a slight twist to them.

I run up the hill hard as usual. Then, I recover for 30 seconds at the top before running hard on the way down. Once at the bottom I recovered for another 30 seconds before I began the process again. Today, I did this 8 times.

Why run down the hill hard. After all, this is harder on the legs and body. Well, this is all true. But let me take you back a few years when I ran the "Run the Red" marathon. This course has a predominately downhill grade to it but maybe not as bad as Boston but still close.

There I ran the first half really hard and by the time I reached 22 miles, I felt like my legs were going to break. For the week afterward, it was all that I could do just to walk around.

During that particular training cycle, I thought I had built up my quads adequately to take the pounding. True enough, I had the strength to power through the hills, but the lack of eccentric work between my quads and hamstring near shutdown my legs. Limping away, I made a mental note to add some downhill work into my training schedule any time that I ran a course with some significant downhill grade to it – case in point Boston.

So come race time in April, I planned to be a better prepared.

 

Thoughts from the Cool Down Runner