Hill repeats

I struggled this morning.  6 miles including 6 hill repeats of 2 minutes each.  Fortunately, the hill we chose was less than 2 minutes long, but I was zapped by the top anyway.  It was 61 feet of climbing over the course of about .21 miles.  I lagged behind the group on each one, except one person was behind me on the last one -- but he has the best excuse -- he just did a Half-Ironman on Sunday (in sub-6 hours, no less!), so he was still recovering.  On the warm-up and cool-down our pace was particularly slow.  But the key thing for me to remember right now is that hill repeats always seem to get easier when I start doing them with more regularity.  It was also not great today b/c I was almost late.  I forgot that I have a longer drive on hill days and I wasn't able to find my pre-run food of choice (granola bar) at home.  I found one that was a different brand but it was too early in the morning to comprehend the long list of ingredients to figure out if it was something I could eat.  So I grabbed a gu as my pre-run fuel to eat in the car, but I didn't have water with me and gu without water is wretched.  I parked and ran for a quick sip of water to help me eat the gu, then we were off.  I had to stow my key on the run and never felt completely pulled together.  I might have to start getting up at 4:45 on hill days.  4:52 just doesn't seem to cut it, and I even ran two stoplights (after stopping to look for traffic of course). 

My feet are still kind of sore, but I've ice-rolled them in the mornings and have been doing some of the calf stretches/strengthening exercises.  But it seems like I'm really sore by the end of the day (and of course the first few steps in the morning are bad).