I Back...and Up and Down.

After spending some time off in St. Louis for the Thanksgiving Holiday, I'm back. I didn't rest on my laurels while in "The Lou".

I competed in the Chesterfield Turkey Trot 5K and got close to my PR. Only 9 seconds off! Dang it!!! It was a really big turn-out as there were over 2,000 people there on a chilly Thanksgiving Day morning. I felt pretty good throughout the race. There were plenty of hills which I didn't have to encounter before in any other event. I felt so good that when I saw the finish line I picked up the pace. I saw someone to the left of me out of the corner of my eye and saw her pick up the pace as well. Being the competitive person that I am, that made me want to speed up. I saw her speed up. I sped up more. And she sped up. Now I didn't know this person, but she didn't want me to beat her and vice-versa.

So with about 200 metres remaining, I just went full sprint (but within control) with no looking back. I've no idea where she ended up, if she beat me to the finish line or what, but I felt totally AWESOME that I was able to sprint like that. I had so much adrenaline pumping after that sprint I felt I could have gone another mile at that pace.

I ended up finishing in the bottom half of my age group, but at least in the top half overall. The race was fun and it also served as my normally scheduled run on Fridays. Because of the holiday, our travel schedule, and the 5K event, I ended up with one less run for the week which was okay, but boy, did I end up paying for it on my long run!

So I gave myself a day off on Friday for a long run on Saturday. I was scheduled to do 8 miles that day so I mapped a 4 mile route to a certain point and then planned to run back.

Well, I couldn't even tell you how many hills there were. It felt like there were more hills in the first 3 miles than there were flats. There was a serious downward slope that I had shuffle down and I knew that on the way back I had to go up that hill. I think there were at least 5 or 6 hills in that first 4 mile leg but I was powering through them. I've never trained with hills, mainly because I live in a very flat area.

On the way back I encountered that dreaded monster of a hill that I went down during the first 4 miles. I took a short walking break before the climb to build up the energy to actually make it all the way up at a running pace. Mind you, I had just run about 6 miles at this point so my body and my legs had taken a pounding on those hills up until this point. This hill was probably a 30 to 40 degree twisty slope that was about 300 to 350 metres long.

I powered up that hill. The Pose method went out the door for that hill. With about 50 metres to go I could feel my legs burn and it felt like I had burned through whatever energy was left in my legs. I had to take another walking break when I reached the top. After that climb, the remaining 3 hills were going to be nothing in comparison, and everything was feeling fine afterwards.

If anything, the weekend was awesome because I had encountered and conquered some things that I hadn't had to deal with before.

1. Hills during a 5K, plus with plenty of gas to spare at the end for a full-out sprint.
2. Big-time hills during an 8 mile run. I wish there were more hills around here because I could use the extra training with hills because they were actually fun! I say that now, but if I had to do a lot of hills every week, I probably wouldn't be saying that.