Weak Hill Workout

Lots to blog about. Sorry if this seems long...

Yesterday's schedule called for a hill workout. I had to work, so I was going to do something similar to Steve Bezner's hill run (he used a treadmill). The plan was to run a 2 mile warm up around the station, 4 x 2 long hills on the treadmill, and return to the loops around the station for the 2 mile CD.

I haven't blogged about it, but I've been very fatigued. My first assumption is, I am getting sick. It was so bad at one point I nearly left work. After a bite to eat and getting off my feet most of the bad stuff subsided. The remaining sore throat, cough, and headache had me wondering if I should scratch the run. Then "work" happened. We responded to 15 calls during the day. I didn't have time to eat, much less run. Some days are like that... hell breaks loose. Then at 6:30 pm we had the annual Christmas parade. The fire station is located on Main street, which puts us first on the route. Santa rides on the last float, which is our antique 1937 fire truck. By the time the parade was over I had enough. One good note, we slept all night.

Unfortunately, I woke up feeling sick again this morning. Guilt overcame me and I forced myself out the door. The run yielded results of a tired-sick man. All the little stuff winded me, although I recovered quickly. The run went like this:

2 mile warm up in 23:01 - 11:30 pace
Full Silly Walk (winded from simple activities such as dorsal flextion hops)
4 x 2 long hills - I ran 9 out of 10 effort up and walked down on the recovery
*average uphill run pace - 7:33*
*average downhill recovery walk pace - 17:38*
1.86 mile cool down in 26:25 - 14:12 pace

Total:
5.78 miles in 1:13:37 with an overall average pace of 12:44

Near the end of my warm up I could see a pod of ~50 Kingwood High School CC runners. I had no idea, but I picked up my pace. The first sign something had changed was the amount of sweat dripping in my eyes. Either way, it was nice to see a sub-12 pace. The last of the CC runners caught me doing silly walks. I'm sure they thought I was some type of crazy man on the Greenbelts.

The recovery was hard. Once again, I was out of gas. I ran 1/3 mile and stopped. Then I decided to walk home. As I said above I was recovering fast, so I elected to run to every other street light. By the time I got home I convinced myself I could finish the cool down. I took off and did what I thought was 2 miles. My garmin is still fuckin' with my pace/mileage, so I was 0.15 miles short after a remeasure on the bike.

Any suggestions what I should be doing this week, IF I wanted to run 18 miles this weekend?