The Hills Are Alive!

...with the sound of heavy breathing and the occasional f-bomb.

I don't like hills. I will search out the flattest place possible to run.  When I started running, I would get to the end of the path, which is just before the hill and turn around:

But I am proud to say I have a little personal heartbreak hill that I have conquered - instead of turning around and following the path, I just keep going...up. I usually walked it. Wanna see?

My own heartbreak hill.

But as I got fitter, I ran up some of the hill, then walked and then finally one day, I "ran" up the entire thing. Was so pleased with myself and was rewarded with this view:

Not too foul, hey?

OK. So far, so good.

Today was our first 10K program day of Hill Repeats. The instructions were to sprint up a hill for 2 minutes and walk or jog (depending on your fitness) for 3 minutes. Repeat 3 times. Then do the same for 1/1 minutes. Sure. No problem! Are you ready, Heartbreak Hill? Bring. It. On.

I had to walk up the last bits of the 2 minutes. My legs couldn't do it. I did the 1 minutes on the flat, on the way back. The second 1 minute could hardly be called a sprint. But I did it (mostly). And I can only get fitter, stronger and better at them. It was quite warm out today. The radio said about 95% humidity. That's Bali conditions, people! Yuck. It was 20C. That's OK. JFDI. And then walk back to the car to die.

Poor Max was so confused! Up, down, run, walk, turn around, run, walk. He had no clue what was going on! I like to keep him guessing! He just loves to run with me.

But I don't think I will ever love hills.

And in other news today, it is Wednesday. You know what that means! Time to see if all this running up hills has made any difference. Except I weighed in before I went for my run, but you know what I mean:

74.0kg - 163.1 lbs

Another small loss for me, one giant leap in the quest to get smaller!! I just need to keep imagining how much easier hills are going to be if I weigh 10kg less!

If you run, do you avoid hills?

Have you ever subjected yourself to hill repeats?