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16 Quarters...uphill

October 6, 2011 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Ran over to Minihans Lane to do some hills after practice. Was going to just 4-6 of them but didn't feel that tired so decided that after 4 I'd do 2 more on an adjacent street (Malvesti) and than call it a day. But after the first one I thought, hey, that's not so bad, why not do four of them. Halfway through, I got this crazy idea. I should take the varsity boys to these hills, have them do this workout, and then as a surprise at the end, have them do 4 Rottweiler hills on the way back. So as I finished up my 8th hill, it suddenly occurred to me, "hey, the street I'm going down is pretty steep too." I wonder if this would make for a good workout." So I decided to run one of them just to see. When I got to the top I had this funny feeling that I wasn't going to stop at just one hill. I had a strange notion in my head about doing Anthony's famous 16 X 400 workout that I did sophomore year of high school on hills, and seeing as each hill took me between 1:28 and 1:45, I figured the distance must be pretty close to that. So after I finished my fourth repeat on Turning Mill (or Freedom Hill as I've nicknamed it) I headed over to Gardiner Road to do 4 Rottweilers (2 in each direction). I was starting to feel fatigued by my 10th or 11th hill, and the last few were getting tough, but on the whole my legs were prepared to handle the load. The effort was largely aerobic, so I never got that crushing soreness of lactic acid building up in my legs - just good ol' fashion fatigue. I was also very careful to take the downhills light, zig-zagging on the steep parts, to avoid hurting my shins. Felt good enough at the end that I picked it up to a tempo all the way home. Now THAT was a bit taxing.