I swear I did hill repeats!

By , May 6, 2015 5:05 am

You know when you do hill repeats, and you’re all excited to upload your Garmin and see the elevation profile? And Garmin is all, “Silly human, you call those hills?! I am not even going to make little blips on the map for you!”

CRY.

150505sadelevationprofile

Ha. Joke’s on YOU, Garmin. I have two apps on my phone that make those hills look like SUMTHIN’:

150505lesssadelevationprofile1 150505lesssadelevationprofile2

They count, right?! RIGHT?

Ha, they are nowhere near the course profile of what I am running for my next half:

150505hospitalhills

but that is not the point of hill repeat training. I will take my long run to some hillier trails, with yes, longer than 40′ inclines.

It’s nice to be training for something without a time goal. My goal for this race is finish feeling strong. And not die in the heat. And hopefully not run too horribly big of a positive split.

I’ve turned in to this strange sort of runner that likes doing some sort of speedwork (repeats, tempos, hills) once a week. I know. It’s odd. I am trying not to question it too much, and just keep up with it. But changing what I am doing throughout the year is a big part of what’s making me stick with it – the week by week variety keeps it from getting stale. First I was focused on 5K training (no PR there), then half training (no PR there), and now, hills (not going for a PR, there). So… while my training hasn’t resulted in any PRs… running is about much more than that, to me. Overall, I just want to enjoy it. And I am really surprised that I am starting to with speed sessions. A bit. I still dread the heck out of them.

15 Responses to “I swear I did hill repeats!”

  1. Karen says:

    You did hills. It’s a lot of up and down there! I agree it’s nice to run and race just to enjoy it. We can’t PR every time out, right. I haven’t really started doing speed work again, but I have done some faster miles lately and it feels like a completely different work out. It feels good to mix things up each week 🙂

    • kilax says:

      We have a lot of inclines around where I live, but I just ran up and down two hills four times each 🙂

      Yeah, I don’t want to PR every time. I just want to have fun, mostly!

      It feels good to have those fast runs every now and then though, right? I really believe that having a variety of runs makes us stronger and keeps us healthier! 🙂

  2. Chaitali says:

    I hate how the Garmin website makes the hills look like nothing! I definitely prefer the app too, mostly for that reason 🙂 The elevation map on your next half looks intimidating. Good luck!

    • kilax says:

      A few years ago, you could change the scale on the elevation profile to actually see your inclines! I wish they wouldn’t have taken that away 😉

  3. I’m the opposite – I love speed work! It’s tough but it’s such a nice break from the monotony the same ol’ long easy miles day after day. It’s such a confidence boost to crank out some fast repeats and I think it makes the workout go by faster.

    I understand why people hate it, but if you stick with your weekly speed work you will start to see huge improvements in your running!

    Nice job on those hills!

    • kilax says:

      I love the monotony of the long slow easy miles day after day. Ha! This is the first year I’ve done speedwork each week and I saw improvements quickly in my overall pace 🙂

  4. Rachel says:

    Wow. Much hills. Very incline.

  5. Lesley says:

    Silly Garmin instead. I haven’t gathered the courage to do hill repeats yet but if I’m feeling slightly sadistic, I’ll throw those in.

  6. HoHo Runs says:

    I’m glad I’m not the only one irritated with the Garmin elevation graph. The scale is always TOO big. They must have changed something in an update because it was not always like this. Why does your graph go from 500 to 1000 feet? It should be 700 to 800. ARGH. Drives me nuts. I keep looking for some type of setting to change. Can’t find one.

    • kilax says:

      They changed this a few years ago 🙁 You used to be able to adjust the scale! Lame, right? I bet if you upload to other programs you can tweak it.

  7. Amy says:

    Yeah, I hate that with the Garmin, too. And I can’t believe you are actually loving hill repeats – you are really hardcore!

    • kilax says:

      Aww, thanks. Running those hills (just to get to another path) this am did NOT feel so good. Tired legs from this workout, for sure! 🙂

  8. Tiina says:

    This happened to me after my last bike ride! I was so excited to see them on the elevation profile and then it was such a let down!

  9. Mica says:

    Wow, that’s awesome that you’re becoming more…amenable to speed workouts! I need to do that. Let me know if you have any tips. I dread them like crazy, but whenever I race, I always tell myself how “fun” and rewarding they’d probably be.

    If I did hill repeats, I’d probably change the scale so that the elevation changes looked as hard as they felt!

    • kilax says:

      You know, since I started this google doc to track all my workouts for the year, that is what has kept me going with things like repeats, and riding my bike once a week. I want to fill out that I did it, on the doc. And I want to update it on my Sunday training log collage pic (on the bottom, I update the stats each week). So really… I guess it’s kind of a gold star thing? I want to check a box to say I did it (for me, it just makes me feel good).

      Hee hee! I totally used to when you manually could!

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