Intervals

Today's training was 5x 5minute hill cruise intervals. I did 4x 5mins last week and had no idea how I could have done a 5th. But with my pocket nestling 5 little pebbles I set off to do my best.

counting stones - one placed at the top of each rep - didn't trust myself to remember the count after the third rep

There's approximately 65m of ascent in each rep, and the aim is to keep my heart rate in zone 3 (154-167bpm) and climb into zone 4 (168-173bpm). Now for me, 170+bpm is just about tolerable, borderline anaerobic and therefore difficult to sustain for very long. I know that intervals/hill reps build up your tolerance to higher intensity work but apart from that the science behind it alludes me. One more thing on my reading list to research.

There's two things that I find difficult with these hill reps.

Firstly and most obviously it's the fact that I need to run for 5 minutes uphill. Finding the right gear (pace) that I can sustain, whilst pushing myself to be in the right heart rate zones has taken a little while to figure out, but I think I've got this one sussed. The more running I do the better I am at gauging my pace and how long that is sustainable.  It also helps to repeat the reps on different occasions on the same route/hill. On this route there's one short section that levels out a little bit, offering a brief period to slightly recover.

The second difficulty, which might not seem so bad, is that the recovery, downhill, section also needs to last 5 minutes. So I find myself shuffling down slowly thinking I'm taking a long time only to find that I've got nearly a minute to spare. This week I took a mental note of where on the uphill section I had reached at each minute. Using this knowledge I was better able to pace myself and use the full 5 minutes to recover on the downhill lap.

Brilliant blue skies offering some comfort as I trained

Here's my thoughts which were spinning round my head as I did the run today...

Steady run over to start of hill reps = keep my heart rate low, conserve energy. what a glorious day, sunny, ok so it's chilly....ignore that bit, my lungs can behave today. I choose to ignore the fact that cold air burns my lungs and leaves me gasping for breathe at the slightest of inclines. today, lungs will be ignored.
lap 1 = let's see what's in the tank today, turn at the top, that wasn't so bad. hang on. 4 more to do.
lap 2 = wow this is tough, this one and 3 more...
lap 3 = when I get to the top I'm over half way*
lap 4 = only.....one.....more.....to.....go.....after.....this....one.....
lap 5 = THIS IS THE LAST ONE, YEY. JUST GET TO THE TOP THEN IT'S ALL OVER. GET TO THE TOP THEN IT'S ALL OVER. GET TO THE TOP THEN IT'S ALL OVER.
Steady run home = might need a snooze later. oh, I can't run up this steady incline, my legs are a bit tired.

*half way on any run of any duration/distance/intensity is a good point for me. I know if I've got that far I have belief that I can repeat it all over again. it helped more so with today's run as halfway included 3 of the uphill reps, so effort-wise it was actually over halfway.

For any stat geeks out there he's my garmin track: Moderate Hill Cruise Intervals (5x5mins)

Snowdrops - a sign of spring

Looking ahead. Next week I'm doing the same thing all over again. Just 6 reps to do then. Joy. I just keep reminding myself that if it were easy then everyone would do it, and everyone would be super-fit.