All-in-one workout!
This entry was posted on 3/1/2011 7:06 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
Yesterday was supposed to be my first hill workout, but soreness, fatigue, and crappy wet weather all conspired to convince me to just stay home and relax after work. In hindsight, it was a good choice. Today I was off and the weather was FINE for running. So I headed out to my old familiar hill in Allaire to do my workout. I haven't done this routine for a couple of years and I forgot how tough it was. It really works all the systems and a lot of muscles that get neglected during the base phase. The sprinting uphill taps into the fast-twitch muscles and wakes them up after a long winter sleep. Then the springing and bounding uphill really work on leg strength, especially the calves and the hip flexors. The fast downhill running is great for leg-speed turnover, and because the terrain is sandy and very uneven, it doubles as agility/coordination work (working a lot of the small acessory muscles.) At the bottom of the hill are 2 x 200 at near 100% effort, dipping slightly into the anaerobic zone. And because the entire run covers 11 miles non-stop, it is mostly aerobic. With the exagerated arm swinging during springing and bounding, even my upper body gets a little extra something. The time for the run was pretty slow, but it doesn't matter. I expect to be very sore tomorrow!
The actual workout went like this; 3.5 miles easy for warm up; two sets of each exercise, bounding, springing, and sprinting; a complete set is made up of the uphill section, some easy jogging, fast downhill, some easy jogging, 2 x 200 fast w/200 recovery; all of this adds up to about a mile. Then 1.5 to cool down. Over the course of a month I doubt I'll add more sets, hopefully it just starts to feel easier.
