Wednesday, January 15, 2014

#Reverb13, Day 22: Uphill

Throughout the month of December, I’ll be participating in #reverb13: Reverb is a way to reflect on the past year and project into the next year with a prompt a day for 31 days.

Day 22 – Uphill

What uphill battle did you keep fighting and fighting in 2013? Are you going to keep fighting it or let it go? Why?

The first thing I thought of when I read this prompt was uphills -- literally.  I posted earlier this year about the monumental shift I made in my training.  Moving from years and years of boot camp three days per week to dropping one day of camp in favor of running hills with my buddies one day.

Living in fairly flat Dallas, I don't get a lot of opportunity to train on hills.  One of the best things about training on hills is that you can quickly see your progress. 

After months of weekly hill runs, I saw concrete improvements in my time.  I still felt like I slowed down more on uphills than many of my friends, but I also spent significant time training for the St. George marathon about five years ago, so I worked a lot on my downhill form and those lessons aren't easily unlearned, so while they pulled ahead of me on the uphills, I'd catch up on the plateau or on the down. 

But hills, like speed, are easily lost for runners if you don't keep up with them regularly. 

Berlin was a very flat marathon.  World record flat.  I think my hill training paid off in my overall strength and fitness. 

But did it help more than an extra day of cross-training would have?  Who's to say? 

So that's my question for 2014 that remains to be determined.  Will I keep fighting that Flagpole Hill loop (I mean, that Flagpole Mountain loop)?  Or will I let it go? 

I think my answer will likely be that I'll wait until marathon training starts in May and then go back to it once a week for 4 months. 

1 comment:

  1. Your workouts are so inspiring. I need to be a little more active but with a cold, I've been battling it out but getting whatever workout I feel up for at the moment. I'm hoping in the coming weeks to amp it up though.

    Have a wonderful day!

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