Can I turn a boring week of running into something you may laugh at?

Bit of a boring week for you really, nothing outside of the ordinary, work hard, play hard and train hard.

Effectively worked 5 days, had a seriously hard session on the Friday night at a couple of local venues and ran with an illegal blood alcohol content the following morning. That was about it - no highlights, no events that will make the front page of the local newspaper, nothing of note....

I suppose I haven’t really covered off the sort of training I have been doing, other than the social events I get involved in so given it was a bit of a monotonous week I’ll go into a bit more running training detail (YAWN!!! – Actually don’t do that you’ll use up a bit of energy and you’ll need all you have to follow me on this journey!!!)

Now THAT'S a hill

Tuesday – ran some hills – now what that means is you find a place (which is not that easy in the sand belt region of Melbourne) with a hill, not a speed hump or a slight 2 or 3 metre rise but a HILL, not a mountain as we don’t really have many of those in Australia but something in between a rocky outcrop or escarpment and a small bower bird mound. Once you’ve found this hill, the idea is for you to RUN up it, yep I’ll repeat that you RUN up it. Now no scenes from Rocky once you’ve got to the top, you’re not Edmund Hillary, even though you may feel like you’re on top of the world (that could be due to the head spins), you’ve simply run up a hill - one single lonesome hill. Now here is the interesting bit, you WALK back down that hill and then you run up it AGAIN – no point in getting out of breath only once, you need to do it a few times to make sure that slight pain in your chest is really there. So this is the exercise, you run the hard bit and walk the easy bit - not the other way around. Now get this….last Tuesday I did that TEN times, the amount of distance I covered would have been enough to constitute a change in time zones but all up I’d moved 300 metres up and down the single hill. 

For those of you who have never ridden a horse, here’s a tip, you find you have muscle groups that you didn’t know existed, generally on the inside of your thighs as you've been gripping the bejeezers out of some poor hack’s rib cage, now with hill running it is pretty much the same. You have these muscles in your legs that you didn’t know were there, or if you knew they were there they were being used for strange things like gripping a jar of pickles as you attempt to prise off the lid. Here’s a secret for those who are yet to run up (and walk down) hills – it flippin’ hurts and the more you do it the more it hurts. Apparently this hill running will teach me to run further (who thought of that??? I would have thought I'd just run further - maybe my logic's a bit simple).

I have this book (I’ll talk about it at some later stage) where they tell you that if you want to run a stupid distance (like a marathon) you need to conquer your inner demons, or go slay a dragon or fight the Beelzebub within or some such self-help jargon, and how you do that is you have a mantra about wanting to be at one with the hills, or make the hills your friend, or go hug a hill or some other new age hippy rubbish. (I am exaggerating but you get what I mean), so I tried their method, and I cannot believe it, I actually enjoyed running up the hills. That’s not to say I enjoyed the rest of the day where I was walking around like Quick Draw McGraw, but the hill running I conquered and I felt proud.

Next day was a boring flat 40 min job to stretch out the legs from the Himalayan encounter I had undertaken the day before. Nothing too interesting just a slow steady 7 mins per km jog. Skipped Friday’s session as I didn’t want to dehydrate myself before I hit the bars of Melbourne and worked my way through, 3 or four glasses of nice wine, a couple of pints of average keg beer and half a dozen tequila shooters. All in preparation for a Saturday morning ParkRun event.

Am I still drunk???

Now I must admit I was a smidgin hungover on the Satdi morn, I think a few people in my slipstream could well have fainted from the stale alcoholic fumes, and the black coffee after the run did wonders for the palpitations. Having said all that I did manage 32.30 for the 5kms which I reckon is not too bad considering I was swaying the whole way as though I had an inner ear disorder.

Sunday – long run day, I’ve been adding 2kms per week to my long runs and this week pumped out 16 clicks (yep that’s 10 miles) with only a few short drink breaks (20 seconds at a fountain would be my guess) AND I ran it at the venue with the HILL, but this time I ran up the hill, around the track, down the hill on the opposite side, around a flat bit a bit more and then up the hill again. So from memory I conquered a further 13 or so hills (I legit lost track of how many laps I ran, I can’t recall if it was 13 or 12 as half way I was saying 7 more to go….7 more to go….or is it 6 more to go…6 more to go…no it’s 7 more to go….or actually I’ve just finished a lap….so did I just finish 7 or do I have 7 to go??? Get my drift???). That night I watched the Olympic Men's Marathon on the tv, safe in the knowledge that I'd run over 35% of the distance that same morning, I'm an expert in these running things now, should have had me commentating! Could have taught Eddie Ego Magpie a thing or two.  Anyway, after a boring week I can tell you, I love them there hills. One day I’ll tell you about wind – now that is one mean little demon to conquer, cause that one you don’t know that he’s waiting around the next corner, ready to stuff you right up…..