Hill Repeats

I've heard rumors that Zooma Annapolis has some hills. While I run in a hilly area, I really don't do hills. I hate hills to be honest. I'm just not a strong runner, so hills hurt. I could obviously fix this, but I haven't...until now.

The past two weeks I have gone to a local park and ran hill repeats. Yes. Hill Repeats. There is a path that goes about a mile around baseball fields and children's play grounds. One section of it is very, very steep. This is where I ran during the week when I first started running and this hill killed me every.single.time.

So, this is where I am going for my hill repeats. I started on April 2 and decided once a week will work. The first week I was only able to do 4 hill repeats. My goal was 5, but on the third and fourth I had shin pain. Not worth injury. On average, I ran the hill in 45:50. Not great, but you gotta start somewhere.

Yesterday I went out for day 2 of hill repeats. The temperature was 40 degrees hotter than last week. Hello spring! Apparently, the mid-Atlantic goes from winter (Sat.'s 5k was 32 degrees) to spring (Tues. hill repeats 80 degrees) like that! Ugh. I was able to run 5 hill repeats without pain. Yea! My average time on Tuesday was 43:24. Not bad for one week! A decrease in 2.26 seconds. Yea!

Then I saw an article from Runner's World that said all hill repeats improve 5k time! This made me very happy! I not only want to decrease my half marathon time and be prepared for the hills, but I do want my 5k time to improve. I would love to see it get under 35 minutes.

I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of hill repeats. Never have been. But, if I can speed up my time and run a steady hill at Annapolis, then it's worth doing it.

Do you run hill repeats? Have you seen an improvement in your speed?


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