Hillapalooza

Last week the weather impacted my training in a way that let me feel like a "Hoss" for a day or two because I ended up with a two-day Hillapalooza!!!

Elevation graphs of my two days of hill repeats!

 I wanted to get a bike ride in on Thursday since I am trying to up my bike mileage to get ready for triathlon season.  I sent out a note to my friends to see if anyone else was up for a ride.  There was a 30% chance of rain forecasted but my friend Kyla said she would join me.  We talked about in the event of the weather looking rough I should bring my trainer and we could ride the trainers together but my post-work brain didn't think to pack the trainer in the car.

I got to Kyla's house to start the ride and you could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance.  We checked the radar on our phones and figured that we had a small window of opportunity to ride before the storms arrived.  Kyla suggested that we do hill repeats which would keep us fairly close to her house in the event that the weather picked up speed.  Reluctantly I agreed...hills are not my strong suit which is why I should be doing hill repeats!
Sneaky Kyla getting me to work on my weaknesses and try to build my confidence.

We started out with an up and over of the hill and then decided to just do the front side of the hill instead of doing more up and overs.  Our running coach has always stressed that hill repeats should be done in even increments so we had to do an even number and yes we counted our final hill climb at the end of the ride as one of our repeats. Throughout the ride there was thunder and even a little lightning but nothing too dangerous.  We were so close to having perfect timing...we had just finished our final hill climb on our way back to Kyla's house with maybe 1 mile to go.  The rain started as an intense downpour and a few big wind gusts to accompany the rain.  That is definitely a tough way to end the workout and for an added bonus our running coach happened to drive by right then and saw us.  He told me I look terrified which is true mostly because he saw us at a spot where a truck had parked in the street and he was slowing to pass them.  We were coming from the opposite direction and were waiting for him to pass so that we could pass the parked truck.  Well, he was taking his time in passing and I was praying that I wouldn't have to unclip in the downpour since I'm still getting used to my new pedals!

Our Motley hill crew: Matt, Jon, Nikki, Me, Robert, and Carolyn

Friday is our hill repeat night for Rush Running and every week we head to a different hill for the workout.  This week, Mike selected a hill in the neighborhood of Avignon.  It is a really nice neighborhood with really pretty houses but when doing hill repeats you don't seem to notice your surroundings.  The group was small with just six of us but we still had fun cheering each other on.  The hill was really steep as you can see from the elevation chart above but not too long.  Each repeat was about 1/3 mile for total distance up and down. The prescribed workout was do to 8-10 repeats.  I had to step down a little and shorten the hill for half of my repeats.  Mike tricked me into doing a distance of 2/3 of the hill versus the 1/2 of the hill I was agreeing to do.  Sneaky Mike!

Two days of hill repeats equals one tired girl.  My legs took 4 miles to get warmed up on Saturday for my long run where I may have repaid the favor to Kyla and tricked her into accompanying me for 8 miles instead of the 6 miles we had agreed to.  Oopsy! It was great to feel like a "Hoss" for two days but my lesson learned was that it's important to give the legs some rest which I did on Sunday with a total rest day.