Hill Graduation Day!

I'm not going to lie. Last night was miserable weather. We were lucky for a few months, but the last few Tuesdays haven't held up in the weather department. I guess that is what you get for running outside in February.

Right before I left work, I noticed it was raining. Of course, I didn't bring an umbrella. But what good would an umbrella do me anyway? You can't hold one and run. Maybe I need one of those umbrella hats! Then I will really be stylish.


I was really hoping the rain would stop before our run, but no such luck. I also didn't bring my red windbreaker / rain jacket. It was actually not that cold out, and I had on a long sleeve top with jacket over it. I started sweating right away, and I felt like I was wearing all the wrong clothes. No jacket, no hood, no hat. The only thing I did bring was a head band. That kept at least a little rain off my face.

This was the 6th (and final) week of hill training! We ran the same hill we ran last week over, and over, and over again. We split the hill in half and ran it two different ways.

1st time up:
Run the first half of the hill hard, the second half easier

Then recover while running down the hill, get your heart rate back down.

2nd time up:
Run the first half of the hill easy, the second half hard

Recover going downhill.

Repeat.

We got a few inches of snow on Friday, and there is still a good bit of snow left in the grassy parts of the park. This made for some crazy, steamy fog like I have never seen. The rain only got harder and harder for the first few hill repeats. At the bottom of the hill you could hardly see 10 feet in front of you, but at the top of the hill the fog cleared. I felt like we were in San Francisco. There were some near miss collisions that almost happened between runners.

It was foggier than this and dark and raining too.


I did this hill 5 times. After the run, our coach Luis told us that the round trip of the hill is a mile. So, including the run to the hill, this run was over 6 miles. That was surprising to me, because it didn't feel like 6 miles. I guess when you break it up like that the distances are deceiving.

I'm not sure what comes after this week. Prospect Park is pretty much all hills, so I don't see how we will avoid doing more hills!