Back to the Hills (Sort Of)

North Downs Ridge 50k Training Block - Week 3/17

After a couple of days of rest and a bit of reshuffling of the training plan, it was time to get back to some more structured training this evening. The session was a shorter set of hill repeats, designed to get some strength and power work into the legs without taking too much out of me:

• 2km warm-up at conversational pace, no faster than 5:50/km, heading towards the hill
• Two sets of 5 × 30-second hard uphill efforts, with 20 seconds walking recovery between each rep and an easy jog back down
• 60 seconds walking recovery between sets
• 2km cool-down at conversational pace, or slower

There was one small logistical problem. The nearest hill with any decent gradient is over 3km away, and it's not particularly suitable for running hard repeats in the dark. I opted for a more convenient alternative. The incline I found was much gentler than a proper hill, but it was the only reasonably accessible gradient nearby, so it would have to do. Not quite the hill session the plan had envisaged, but better than trying to force something that wasn't practical.

The half marathon PB from the weekend is obviously still having an effect on the legs. They felt reasonably good during the actual hill repetitions, and I managed to complete both sets with fairly consistent efforts.

It was towards the end of the session, particularly during the cool-down, that the fatigue started to become more noticeable. Everything began to stiffen up a little, which wasn't entirely unexpected given the effort I'd put in over the weekend.

The hill wasn't quite a hill, and the session wasn't quite as straightforward as planned, but the job was done.