The year of the target by kizzi10000

Woke up today wondering why Ididn't ache after last nights hill session. Not that I was compaining or anything, it was just unusual. So I thought I would give my own hill session a go on the treadmill. Not enough hills of the length and incline round here I need to replicate the South Downs.

Even though I've been running (of sorts) since April 2006, everything is still a huge learning curve. I've probably done everything wrong that you can think of, and learned much of what I know the hard way. But while I now know quite a bit about running, and have a fair bit of experience, I'm still elarning. Especially as I've never trained as hard as this in all those years.

Can you see where this is leading?

Yep. Got on the treadmill, did a mile warm up, no problems. Bit stiff to start with, but soon loosened up. Then I set the pace to 10:00 and the incline for 3% ready for a half mile rep. Oh. Boy.

The legs may have been perfectly happy doing what they usually do, but the quads certainly told me they were not very happy at being made to work again so soon! Still, it wasn't anything too bad, and nothing they wouldn't have to get used to, so I just modified the session. Instead of doing 6 half mile reps, I turned it into a pyramid - 2 x 0.25, 1 x 0.5, 1 x 0.75 and 1 x 0.25. Covered 5m in total, and felt great afterwards.

Now I'm sure some of you will be shaking your heads at 2 hills sessions back to back, but the thing with going into the unknown is that you don't know what you can tolerate until you try and do it. I certainly wasn't sure how the legs would handle today, but seeing as I didn't feel as though I pushed myself much last night, it was worth the gamble. I have learned that you don't always have to hurt the following day to prove you've worked hard - it's a sign of improved fitness that it doesn't always hurt lol. And that just because you don't hurt doing every day stuff, doens't mean you ain't gonna feel it if you try too hard!

Still, the hard work paid off - I lost 3.5lbs at Slimming World tonight,a nd won Slim of the Week, so I can eat fruit this week!! into the next stone bracket down too, with 8.5lbs to go until I'm back at the lightest from last summer, before everything went tits up.

Another club night tomorrow night, and another learning experience. Can I run 4 days in a row and still be able to function normally afterwards..... We have 'undulating circuits' apparently, so I will see what they class as 'undulating' before I decide whether to stay with the steady group or tag on to the medium group.