March 1, 2010

Hills and What Not

Even though I live in the Colorado mountains I live in a valley and finding good hills to run are hard. I use to live in Crested Butte where every run you had to do some hill work wether you wanted to or not.

Here in the Gunnison valley I have a few short steep hills and two long hills to choose from when I want to do hill training. Also, most of my running is done during my lunch hour so if I want to do some hill work in the winter I have two choices. One is a steep hill but it only takes at the very most 3 minutes to get to the top and the other is a longer hill with a gradual climb. It is about 1 mile to the top.

Today I decided to do the long, easy hill during my 6 mile lunch run . The hill is also about 1.5 miles from the office and total I was able to do of 1.5 miles of uphill. I also told myself to keep my time no slower than 11 minutes per mile on the uphill. Well I had a GREAT run and I was able to keep my uphill time at 10:30 or faster. Also my overall average pace was 9:57! I just did my fasted 6 miles ever. I may not be a fast runner but I am getting faster.

I do need to get running more because I really slacked off during the month of February. My miles to date as of 2/28/10 were 108.50 so if I want to hit 1000 miles before the end of the year I really have to get my butt in gear.

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