A Week of Hills

This is the hill I run...I'm sure it looks steeper when I'm on it!

I like to mix things up a bit with my runs, so I don't get too bored and to help improve my fitness.

Hill runs were introduced by my dear husband Dean in early December.  He set me a challenge - and when he does that, he knows my competitive nature will take over and I won't be able to refuse!  The challenge was to run up a hill (it's a bit under 100m), which falls at the 2.5km mark on our usual run.  The first week was 1 hill, the second week was 2 hills, the third was 3 etc etc.   Once I'd been running the hills for a couple of weeks, I noticed my 5km parkrun time was getting significantly faster - and it was no coincidence!  I should point out, these hill "sprints" include pushing the pram (with the 2 kids inside!) - it's really hard work!  On days when we run together, we each do a few sprints with the pram and a few without.

The last couple of weeks I've really been struggling with the hills, and only really doing about 1 session of hills a week.  I just felt like I didn't have the energy to get up there and I was ready to go home after only 1 lap!

So this week, I've had a bit of a hill focus.  On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I've run the standard 2.5 kilometres, then 6 laps of the hill, then the 2.5km home.  The 7km loop takes about 46-47 minutes, which is a fair bit slower than my usual pace - but I've really been trying to run every step of the hill, no matter how slowly I go.

It is seriously hard work pushing 45+kg of pram plus kids uphill!  But I have to say, I've gotten so much encouragement this week from other people going up or down.  That really gives me a boost and gives me a bit of extra push to go on!

I've found myself using a technique when I'm on the way up, that I used when I was in labour!  I read about it in a book called "Birth Skills" - and it's pretty straight forward, but it's just counting it out.  This helps to distract you from the pain, gives you a focus and helps make the time go faster.  And now I know how many steps I take up the hill, so I use that as encouragement along the way (halfway there!  Only 10 steps to go!)

The great thing about doing hills as opposed to just a standard run is that it really gets the heart rate up and adds on a couple of extra kms that I probably wouldn't have otherwise run.  So here I am on Wednesday, with over 20kms already under my belt for the week, and I haven't even done a long run yet - bonus!

I just want to finish by saying that this week marks 1 year since I started the 12 week body transformation.  I am simply amazed at how far I've come in a year - I could never have imagined I would call myself a runner!  I really want to encourage anyone just starting out - a year ago, I could barely run 1km - and now I'm heading for a marathon!  Anything is possible!!!

The view on the way down - it just happens to be the former Sandgate Baptist Church, where Dean & I got married 6.5 years ago!