As lockdown training continues Marcus and I realise we need to catch up on the missed hill sprint session from the weekend. It’s already dark so the park venue is a non-starter, not enough light to safely run up our usual patch.
As it happens we live on top of a hill so we decide to have the training equivalent of a staycation and use part of our own hill. We find a stretch that’s reasonably lit. At first we balk because one street light is broken in the middle, but after jogging around a bit we decide this is our best bit and having acclimatised a bit more we realise it will be light enough to be safe. The photo is taken at the same time but the camera makes it look much lighter than it does to the naked eye.
Our bold plan (with hindsight) was to do the planned session of 2 sets of 4 sprints with walkback recovery between sprints and 7 minutes between sets. We pace out 100m up the hill, altimeter says a rise of 17m.
It’s interesting running on the pavement rather than wet grass and the first run feels easy. The second run starts well but about halfway up everything is burning far more than usual. We finish the third run and in a mutual collapse of exhaustion, we decide 2 sets of 3 will be more than enough.
On the last run, as with the second, I have to check my pace at about 2/3 of the distance when an approaching car’s headlights turn everything to black and I’ve no idea where my feet are landing. Re-accelerating adds a certain pain.
Hard, but a hill we’ll probably use again.
