Hill Drills!

So, last night everyone had interval work-outs of some sort. The advanced group had a hill interval training (yay for us...that was sarcasm ). I don't even know what the other groups did. I used to read through the entire email workout, but then it just made me tempted to run with the intermediate group instead of the advanced group, so now I just scroll down to the bottom and only read my workout.

Our workout included two loops of hills which each included two of the steepest hills in Central Park. The gist of it was:

a 1.7 mile warmup
a FAST uphill
go down to an effort level one on the downhill
a FAST (even longer and steeper and windier) hill
a little recovery across the park
repeat the two hills
recover .2 miles
run at regular pace for remaining 1.5 miles

The first hill didn't seem that bad, but then every subsequent hill killed me. I have never done a hill workout where you actually PUSH up the hill, just where you run at your normal pace up the hill (and then recover on the downhills). I have really been monitoring my effort levels using my breathing as a guide. I read about this all the time in Runner's World, but have never actually done it. I think it is actually a really great gauge.

I have also raised the bar for myself on my marathon goal. So...instead of running with people who run at my pace, I am pushing myself to run with faster people. Last night I ran with a group of girls who are aiming for a 4:00 marathon. It was hard, but I enjoyed it. In fact, I finished well before they did, by really pushing the hills. When I got home I made sure that I iced my knee (just in case). I also made sure that I stretched really thoroughly with the group. Unfortunately by the time I was going to bed, my hamstrings were kind of sore. They still are today. But I guess that's why Wednesday nights are always cross-training nights. Since Tuesday nights are usually some sort of speed work, it is nice to have a break the night afterwards.

On another subject...one major annoyance of mine lately has been my nose piercing. I have what is known as a nostril screw and the tip of it is supposed to rest against the top of your nose on the inside. Most of the time it does...except for during my workouts. Then it twirls down and falls out of my nostril. I don't know it has something to do with heat, or bloodflow or salt or whatever. But anyway, in my quest to fix it all the time I have to stick my finger up to readjust it. I'm sure everyone on my team thinks I am picking my nose. It's rather embarrassing. Does anyone else have this problem or a theory on how to fix this? (besides getting rid of it...that is a option I would rather not do).

Oh, and because I am obsessed with improvement, I went home and mapped out our course for the hill workout on mapmyrun.com. I was going to be very disappointed with my time if it ended up being a 10 minute mile pace (even though some of the workout was recovery pace). It ended up being 6.5 miles total and I averaged a 9:13. Hurrah!