Hill Repeating!

   I had my first experience with hill repeats today and, whaddya know, I lived to tell about it!
   I described hill repeats to her as I was on my way out the door and Doralyn asked me if my will was up-to-date... so I did have a little trepidation. Suzan at http://welcometothenuthouse.com had sent me a link to an article describing hill repeats and as soon as the author used the word "brutal", I was hooked (and just a touch nervous about the whole thing.)
   I very definitely had a hill in mind, though, and headed there this morning. Most of what was said in the article flew out of my head by the time I reached the hill so I stood there at the bottom of it, looking up, and thinking to myself so do I have to run the whole thing? I seemed to remember something about at least a forty yard run but knew that the whole hill was way longer than forty yards.

Today's hill.

   I walked part way up, stopped, set my Garmin, and took off running hard. I basically ran until I was really tired and then stopped. The Garmin is set to "kilometers" and it showed ".12". My math has always sucked but I finally figured this out to be just over a hundred meters. A hundred meters is substantially more than forty yards but I liked the roundness of that figure and so decided to stick with it.
   I then did four more repeats, bringing me up to the recommended five. At the end of the fifth, I was toast. Hard to say what a sixth repeat might have felt like but I imagine I'll find out next week.
   If my heel comes around. Because right at the moment it hurts as bad as it has in a long time. This was the first time I'd run "all out" in ages  and one of the very first times I did so going up a hill. I don't think my plantar fascia enjoyed the experience and it's currently letting me know about it. My hope is that by tomorrow it has forgiven me just a touch. We'll see...

   The actual running, though, was simply not as bad as advertised. I've had a pretty steady diet of tennis, football and ball hockey over the last forty years or so and the idea of going all out, resting briefly, and then going all out again is totally ingrained in me. Didn't stop me from being exhausted, mind you, but it was a very familiar kind of exhausted and, therefore, not very scary. I know I can do this again, no probs!!
   Except for maybe that heel...