Simms hill repeats

As inspired by George, I did some simms hill repeats today since its close to home.  And it felt really good.

I started out REALLY slow.  My left hip had some minor soreness, probably from the weekends efforts report.  But it warmed up after about 2 miles and felt fine.  Here are my splits for the hill repeats (the hill section I ran is .48 miles):

5:26 up (11:22 pace) – 3:45 down (7:52 pace)

4:36 up (9:37 pace) – 3:33 down (7:25 pace)

3:30 up (7:18 pace) – 2:37 down (5:24 pace)  - Kind of funny to see my uphill pace drop 2 minutes per mile each lap.  I’m sure that last lap though was approaching the limit of how fast I can run up that hill because my heart rate was in the mid 170′s at the top.  I’m sure I could run it faster, but probably not much at this point.

I took the first lap really easy both ways, just to continue my warm up really.  After each lap I just rested for about 15 seconds grabbing a drink of water then headed back up.

The 2nd lap I decided to put forth moderate effort both ways.  But I didn’t pushed a bit harder on the uphill than the down.

Then the 3rd lap I wanted to push it really hard.  It felt cool to run up the hill faster than I had just run down it.  To look down at my pace and see it in the low 7′s surprised me, but I just kept at it and was able to hold it pretty steady to the top.  Then I went all out on the down hill too.  My mile pace for that total mile up/down the hill was 6:21/mile.  Which I was pretty pleased with considering its a 190 foot ascent over 1/2 mile.  Not sure if I could have repeated that last repeat time again though.  I think sometime I’ll do that again and see if I can 2 or more laps at the pace of my last lap.

Then I just ran easy 9 min pace the couple miles back home.  I really enjoyed the progressive pushing workout.