Dreaded Hills

Have I mentioned how much I HATE running hills? Hate them, loath them, dread them... I'm just no good at running hills. Which probably means I need to do them more!

This week, instead of going to DVC for our usual track workout, our calender said we'd be meeting at another track for a hill workout. What?? We're not doing any hilly courses this season, so WHY do we have to do hills? I know, they make us faster and better runners. Still, I was not looking forward to the workout.

The team met up at Daugherty Valley High School way out in the new developments in San Ramon. We weren't actually going to be doing any running on the track-- the school was just our meeting place. After everyone arrived, we started out on our "warm-up" run to a park about .75 miles away, which is kind of a long warm up. We spent some time stretching there, and then waiting for a few more stragglers, and then we ran another half mile or so to our "hill." The street that we were going to run on was in a residential area, and curved around in a horseshoe, U shape. We started our running up the hill on one side, and then met at the top in the middle of the U to catch our breaths. The hill wasn't that bad but I was definitely huffing and puffing at the top! After a break, we got to go down the other side of the U.

Since Phil wasn't there last night, he put me in charge of taking pictures. I stopped half way down the hill so that I could take pictures of everyone as they came back up the hill. That didn't work so well... it's hard to take pictures of running figures in the dark! I ran up the rest of the hill with them and we took a breather again at the top, before heading back down the first hill to our starting point. At this point it was already 7:45 and I wasn't sure if that was the end of our workout. Nope, that was just half of it! Coach Al K. had everyone do that same set up hills again. One of my mentees wasn't feeling well, so I hung out with her at the bottom of the hill while everyone did the other set. After they all got back, we still had to go all the way back to the high school, which was a mile away. I stuck with a couple of girls who were walking so we didn't get back to our cars until 8:30, and by the time I got him it was 9:00 :(

Even though I only did one set of hills, it was still a good workout and I was happy to see that I wasn't the last one up the hill :) I can feel a little soreness in my calves today, but it's not too bad. We're scheduled to do hills workouts instead of track the next few weeks-- all I have to say is that all these hill workouts better lead to an improvement in my running!