Today the folks I have been running with introduced me to one of their more masochistic routines which really wore me out.
It is pretty hard to find hills in Santa Clara (it is pretty flat) but they found an area along a trail that we run which goes up and down from trial level to river level and back. Basically in a 1/4 mile stretch you go up, down, up, down where the hills are about 60yds long up and down with a very short flat stretch in between. It does not sound like much but believe me it is.
The plan today was to run 12 intervals on these little hills. The interval times started off at 3:20, 3:00, 2:40. Basically we started slower and built up doing each interval twice totalling 6 runs, and then repeated the whole thing.
You can pretty easily finish the first couple of intervals faster than 3:20, so you get about 30+s of rest in between. But... then the intervals get shorter and you get more tired, meaning you have less time to rest. The other folks are in better shape than me so they always had at least 10-15S rest in between. Me on the other hand got pretty tired after the first 5 intervals and found myself needing to start right away after finishing. Whew!
In the end I was so tired that I only lasted for 10 intervals. So I ended up with basically 30 minutes of straight hill running (oh by the way we ran to and from the hills, about 3/4 of a mile each way). Supposedly this will make out flat runs faster. I am not sure if I was working old muscles in a new way or new muscles in an old way but either way it was painful doled out in 3 minute intervals. I'll have to try it again just to see if I have improved.
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