Friday, April 23, 2010

The Hills... and I'm not talking about Spencer Pratt

O.M.G.  Sooooooo I have a little confession to make. I hate running hills. Seriously, my hatred for hill running stems from when my dad took me to Wirth Park (normally a sledding hill) during the dead of summer to run it because apparently I was getting a little chubby. So from that day forward, I see hills and I want to barf.

Well, I figured that since my treadmill has an incline feature, I would just use that to experiment with some fierce hill running. Now, I should let you know that everytime I run on the treadmill I always use at least an incline of 1, but I usually do 2 or 3.... just because a perfectly flat surface is impossible to recreate in a race setting, unless you're racing around a track. (PS, I've also done a few runs/walks at the local highschool track, we'll get to that in a different post....)

So, [insert Christine huffing and puffing here] after 2 miles of incline repeats, I actually saw Jesus' face. Let me give you a little idea of how I attempted this suicide mission hill workout.
Allow yourself 2 hours away from husbands, children, pets, soulmates, partners-in-crime, etc to receive the full benefit of this workout (30 minutes on the treadmill and at least 90 minutes to watch Jersey Shore to allow your muscles to recover).

Here's what I did:

Warm-up 10 minutes  4.0 mph 3 incline 00:00-10:00
Interval 1 30 seconds 5.5 mph 10 incline 10:00-10:30
Interval 2 30 seconds 4.0 mph 5 incline 10:30-11:00
Repeat 14 more times 11:00-25:00
Cool-down 5 minutes 3.5 mph no incline 25:00-30:00

I'm just being honest here... towards the end I was not hitting the 5.5mph everytime. I was DYING. Legitimately dying. So, that's just a format to follow, by no means would I suggest to push yourself so hard that you feel as though you may actually fly off the treadmill.

Here's a little thought of the day for you to focus on while you sweat:



















Ok, so I know I normally post all of the unicorns and rainbows inspirational quotes, but Addy was sitting next to me when I picked out that wolf image (and since her Husky looks just like a wolf) she decided that she wanted me to use the picture of the dog for the blog. So be it. What Addy says goes.  SO BITE OFF MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW! And then chew it up like its a Godiva dark chocolate with raspberries bar. YUM :)

Goodnight!

xo, c

1 comment:

  1. I'm sure you'll never be running downhill either in this half marathon so it's best to never touch the decline setting. It's not a good idea to work out those muscles it's best to ignore them.

    Also interesting, running on a treadmill shortens and possibly alters your stride. That's okay though, when you're running the half marathon you better use all the practice you got in avoiding the edge of the belt while running outside. The two correlate perfectly it seems.

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