Skillz in the Hillz

So I met up with Joyce, Jennifer, Lenny, Collin and Tate from Team Zucchinis 30 minutes before class.  As I mentioned last week, this week was our first team challenge so we decided to show up a bit early to walk through our plan.  Our goal was to make 4 dishes in 60 minutes, and show that our cuisine reigned supreme in our cooking school's, iron-chef like challenge!  We were excited, as finally after 6 weeks of just watching and learning from Chef Scott and Chef Linda, we were anxious to have a real challenge with no help!  We had already planned out our menu, and all our ingredients laid out.  We were determined to whoop up on Team Santoku, and Team Cumin since we lost last week's little challenge at the end of class.  The other 3 teams, mehhh... they suck, plain and simple. 

Ooops, wrong blog, sorry.

So this morning was great.  We ran a nice paced out for a 2.5 mile warm up to the bottom of Scenic for our hill repeats.  The pace was a little faster than our normal workouts warm up pace, but that's fine.  It think it was the extra distance and the anticipation of the year's first hill workout. 

Our goal was to run 4 repeats of the Scenic loop.  But unlike past training programs, we were supposed to go hard hard up the hill to the top, and not realy worry about the time back around and down to the start.  We were to use that loop as recovery then pickup to Marathon Goal Pace.  While meeting with coach on Tuesday, he told me he'd like to see the times on the climbs get faster and faster, so that was my particular goal (even if he didn't announce that to the group this morning).  I know the recoveries didn't matter, but I thought it'd be interesting to time them just to see what they were like. 

  

It was dark out there, and I know i've seen some potholes when we've run long runs on that road, so i was a little apprehensive on the first couple of climbs. 

Here are my splits. 

Hill 1: 2:15  (not bad, and had heavy legs)

Recovery: 4:05

Hill 2: 2:16 (I stupidly let up about 10 yards from the yellow sign (our marker) and came in too slow.  UGH.  However, my legs had shaken out the cobwebs, and were feeling great)

Recovery: 4:03

Hill 3: 2:10 (hell yeah!  feeling good!  It burns, but there's not stopping when it burns.  Just let it burn!)

Recovery: 4:19  (slowed up to wait for my boys to catch up)

Hill 4: 2:07  (felt great.  Just wouldn't take 'tired' or 'no' for an answer when i asked my legs to give me more.  Crank Crank Crank.  Push Push Push. More more more!!!

Recovery: Didn't stop my watch at the bottom, but pretty similar to the 3rd one.

I loved it!  I can't wait to do it in two weeks!!  My goal will be to run 5 repeats under 2:10, but we'll see how recovered I am after out Trail Marathon next weekend in Portland.   I read a report where a guy had his GPS and said that is read a total elevation loss of 7,000 feet, and gain of 4,000.  -3,000 total, but this may take a little toll on quads ad calves.   We'll see.  I'm not racing it, so we'll see, but 26.2 miles, is still26.2 miles, and I've learned that you always respect that distance.

To put things into persepctive... a year ago we did this workout... and I found my post about it.  Looks like a year later, i've gotten faster!  15 seconds faster on the last one!   

"A painful 3 loops where my 3 climbs timed in at 2:18, 2:22 and 2:22....  "

I'm thinking my base building may have worked, but it's too early to get too confident.  I have many many more miles to go before I sleep.