Sharp-eyed readers may have instantly spotted from the title that I didn’t manage to get out for any more practice runs before I attempted a challenging hill run.
In my defence, it has only been 10 days and most of those have been rather painful. On the day after my last run I casually leaned down into the fridge (to get the OJ) and tweaked my back, which elicited some (probably quite shocking) screams. This led to a week of moving carefully (certainly no HIT exercises) and stretching gently, followed by a session with Paul Harmes, osteopath extraordinaire and I am now well on the way to full recovery.
Just as well, because I had already agreed to meet Daren on Monday morning for a run.
It was a glorious day, albeit with a chilly edge and as we set off, up the hill, the run seemed like a really bad idea. Fortunately the uphill stretch is short and we were soon relaxing into a pleasant downhill lollop… more a ‘conversation on the move’ than a run.
Paraphrasing Nietzsche, you can have as many downhills as you are willing to endure uphills and our next uphill took us from Pyecombe all the way to the top of Wolstonbury Hill.
Given my recent musings about fitness, it’s interesting to consider that over the last four years our times on one stretch of this hill have varied from 8 minutes 5 seconds to 11 minutes 22 seconds, with the slowest being our recent January run (second slowest was our February run). The HIT exercises must have made some difference because our time was 9 minutes 7 seconds, although I was a little pooped when we got to the top.
The next uphill was at the bottom of Wolstonbury: it’s a really sharp slope with a mix of steps and (often slippery) path. I can confirm that Daren ran gently the whole way, although, whilst I also micro-ran on the path, I chose to walk up the tricky steps.
That just left another downhill and then a long jog along the bottom of the Downs to the foot of my nemesis, the Tank Tracks, the final uphill that beat me in January and February. Hill running requires a mix of cognitive strength, good leg muscles and good lungs, all of which seemed to desert me in these two runs.
We agreed that Daren would simply keep going (he’s a lot fitter than I am at the moment) and that I would follow along in my own time. He inexorably pulled ahead, but I simply kept putting one foot in front of the other… at least until I dropped my bottle cap, which caused me to stop. I caught my breath for a minute or so, then continued running slowly to the top. Success 🙂
Over the last four years the times on this stretch have varied from 10 minutes 37 seconds to 14 minutes 45 seconds (again, the latter was in January, with the second slowest in February) so my time of 12 minutes 49 seconds was at least a step in the right direction… and Daren must have easily beaten this by 60 to 90 seconds.
Sitting here I’m reflecting that in 2009, when I was super-fit, it once took me more than 15 minutes to reach the top… you might enjoy reading the reason for that in the archives at https://www.fosterruns.com/2009/07/the-blighty-grouse-grind/
The reward for our final challenging uphill was a long gentle downhill back to the cars and a final time of one hour 18 minutes for our hilly 6 mile run.
