Day 74 - Hill repeats

Today I woke up (a good thing) and it was a slow moving day. After some coffee and breakfast I finally made it out the door a little after 9 a.m. The other years I was training for this race I was running by 6 or 7 on the weekends. It is nice to sleep in most weekends this year. I decided to do hill repeats today. The Pulpit Rock road hill is a mile from the bridge to the last telephone pole at the top. To make it fun I decided to take a picture every time I would make it to the top - see pictures below. I am glad I took off from running yesterday because I needed the extra energy to finish these hills. I don't run them for speed only the endurance. You can really break yourself down quick and learn to deal with the discomfort of running when you do a lot of them. I wore my shoes with the screws in them and I am glad I did. The road is still cover with ice and ice foot prints all the way to the top. It was really good training because I had to watch every step like you do running on a rocky trail. I went there to do 10 and I finished them all - not walking one of them. My last hill was tough but kept moving forward. After I snapped the last pic I ran over to the lookout and laid on the ground in the snow for a couple minutes and felt like I could of fell right a sleep. I only used two bottles of my drink mix and no food so I was low on energy by the end. Stopping for a couple of minutes I could feel the legs getting real tight. After hobbling down the mountain I went home and had my favorite recovery drink - Coca-Cola.

2-12-2011 - 21 miles - 4:53 - run - 6,514 feet up - 6,514 feet down elevation