Hill Reps (Well sort of)

Back at Kelvingrove for some hills today and the dreaded 5 long and then 5 short.  The 5 short being impossibly steep and you are already knackered from the 5 long.  Lindsay secretly loves these ones but for everyone else they are a nightmare.  Luckily I was given a reprieve as I will be racing the Jack Crawford on Saturday.  Well I will be if the weather is half decent as I can think of nothing worse than racing along the canal if it is raining and windy.  The long reps consist of a long (yeah obvious) grind with a short steep recovery.  Taking it easy I ran up behind Lins, John, Ben and Jamie but found that I was catching them during the recovery.  A case of the tortoise and hare.  I then took the 3rd one fast and managed to overtake Lins.  Something I have never done before.  During the 4th rep I noticed that although I was taking it easy the Garmin was showing a pace of 5:49 so I bowed out of the last one and did some stretching instead.

Onto the short ones and I decided to listen to my wife for once.  She said it would be beneficial to go up the hill as if you are running up stairs.  Fast legs with a small stride and remember to work the arms.  Since I had gone a bit harder in the long ones I decided I would only run fast in the 1st, 3rd and 5th one.  Doing what my wife said paid off as I felt quite good going up.  Even managing to get to the top before everyone else on the first one.  Okay I had done less on the long reps but I was pleased all the same.  These guys that I train with are all running well at the moment although Lins tries to tell me otherwise.  The 5th one was tough but I managed to just stay ahead of Ben but Lins was first up still looking like he was enjoying it.  I told Jamie my new style of running up hills i.e. Debbie's idea and he will try it next time.

For anyone looking for a good film over the next few weeks then you can't go wrong with Slumdog Millionaire.  I had heard good things about it and so you go to the cinema expecting to be disappointed.  The exact opposite happened and the film was even better than everyone had said.