Thursday, September 30, 2010

Z-Hill Repeats Revisited

After a nearly three mile "warm-up" with one of our faster runners on the XC team for part of his workout (sub-seven pace), I headed over to the cemetery for a session of Z-hill repeats.

"Z", as in there are two sharp hairpin turns that challenge the ability to corner and accelerate out of turns. Between each rep, I jogged a shortcut down the hill for active recovery, and took an extra one-minute break halfway through.

It went okay. I felt fine and great physically, but yet I found myself not really pushing the pace. This was totally mental. My splits averaged around 1:08, but last time I did them they averaged around 1:03. Confirmed my slight bit of sandbagging when I decided to push the last one and hit it at :58. I thought to myself "THAT'S what it should really feel like". Then I felt guilty for not giving that effort in the other reps. Sigh...

Ran the cooldown and was done.

w/u: Ran 2.9 miles @ 6:53/mile pace.
10 hill repeats w/ active recovery - 2.8 miles total @ 8:30/mile pace.
c/d: Ran 1.0 miles @ 8:46/mile pace.
Paved roads.
Very hilly.
Around 70 degrees, overcast, muggy.
Brooks Mach 11 spikeless, shorts, short sleeved shirt (for warm-up).

1 comment:

Kim said...

That hill run at the cemetery must have been really cool with the weird weather we have with gray skies and wind. Glad you got it done as it sounders killer!