 Long before I knew its name as the Davidson Mesa, I called the back hill on that big flat area behind my office as LOSH - or the Louisville Open Space Hill. I am including a picture of the mesa today, as the webcam link I put up yesterday ... well for the night owls on the internet, it provides a less than illuminating image.
I would put LOSH in my logs to indicate where I had run. This back hill is a short jaunt, but it is fairly steep, rocky and makes my arms hurt when I run it. Along with other parts of my body. Yes, this hill and I have a history. And I think I have yet to win an argument with it. This hill ain't that long. Alone, its steep section is probably 200 yards. A workout for me in the past on this hill has been eight up and down repeats, with the ups being under a minute. So a minute on it is near eight minute pace. That seems slow. I keep telling my lungs and legs that and they don't really seem to care. For a short workout, it is one that usually leaves me grabbing my knees at the end and wobbling in the office for the rest of the day. And it always leaves me with that mixed feeling like I had accomplished something, but that I had so much more to do.
In any case, I took a slightly different approach to this old friend today. Rather than just running the hill outright, I ran a lead up section to it, and then drove into the hill, and then would loop back around the top side of it back to the lead up section. These ended up being just short of being 2 minute repeats with then about a four minute rest jog. The lead ups and hill ended up being about a quarter mile and the jogs were a half mile.
I did not feel real zippy - mostly because I still can't seem to get my stride out as long as I'd like it - because of this abdominal thing. That problem is getting better (which supports my hypothesis that the treadmill is aggrevating it, as I have not been on the treadmill for a few days) but it is still a bit of a problem. Nonetheless, I was getting up the hill in about 65-67. I was satisfied with that given it was a bit iced over in some parts (putting me off the trail into the cacti and yucca), and with the lead in. I did six of these, each one getting quicker. And like an old dependable friend, it left me grabbing my knees on the last one, but still feeling like I had a lot to do. I will look to build this workout to be more laps, quicker overall, and quicker on the ups. 10 miles total, 3 miles warmup, 3 mile warm down, 4 with the six loops. Contributions to the workout today came from Coheed and Cambria (James, I don't really you but I am guessing you'd dig these guys ...) and The Darkness (those guys are nuts).
I am playing with the idea that next week I drop my mileage to 50 miles (from the 70-80ish I have been doing) and focusing the work more on speed. I am interested in performing this experiment for two reasons: 1.) I am curious to see how I respond to a drop in mileage. I'd like to think that a drop would leave me feeling fresher and that I could attack the speed workouts a bit more and b.) I'd like to try this to emulate a bit of a taper. I am trying to figure out how that taper needs to look now, particularly given how Lucho feels his had adverse effects to his effort at Austin. I am thinking that this little experiment will let me play a bit harder in that mileage space, begin to see how my body will respond to lower mileage (albeit, I will be upping the intensity some) and start to sort those things out (178 days to go!).
Oh yeah - I got a question: why is your blog called Hang Nine? Answer: I have nine toes. I lost a toe (and created all sorts of other foot scar tissue issues) when I was a kid (let's say it is a race I lost). My Dad coined the phrase when we found I could not really wear flip flops as they would simply fall off that foot. So think of hang ten (the surf term). I hang nine.
Live it.
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