Hill Cramming

In June, prior to starting to train for the Twin Cities 10 Miler (actually before we even got in to the lottery for the race) I re-read my blog post from 2010, and was reminded of how hilly the route was. I sent a panicked text to Toni that there were ZOMG HILLS in the TC10 and I suck at hills, and I was going to die.

She calmly replied that we'd make sure to integrate all the hill running into our training. Because she's smart. And knows exactly what to say to calm the crazy. We had a lot of endurance runs with 100 meter pick ups in them, as well as ones with 12 second hill repeats.

But as I was driving to work this week, I thought to myself, "self, have you been doing diligent hill work as promised?" and my answer was, "shit, no!" So we're 2 weeks out from the race, and I know you can't cram train for a race, but can you hill cram for a race? Because I'm going to try.

We're going to pick hillier routes for our last two long runs, which should be easy since the bike trail (my beloved flat bike path where I don't have to worry about stopping at stop lights and getting hit by vehicles) is under construction. We also do a hilly route with the group run on Wednesday nights, so we might do 3.5-4 miles with the group instead of the usual 3 to take advantage of the hilly parts, and taking a hillier route during our regular runs from the library. Eeps.

So hill cramming. TBD if that works out or if we should've started in June AS PREVIOUSLY DISCUSSED. This will serve as a reminder for next year when we're doing the marathon instead of the ten miler. Mark my words (and someone actually remind me in June, please).