A Lesson in Hill Repeats

Now that we're (almost officially) working with Jill, we get the joy of bi-weekly hill repeats. Every other Wednesday, following the 6 am spin class, a gaggle of folks makes their way from the club to the 40^th street hill for 45-50 minutes of suffering that can only be derived from hill repeats. And I use the word "suffering" in the most light-hearted, positive way possible.

For the uninitiated, hill repeats consist of a slight warm-up, and then numerous repetitions (anywhere from 5-10) of a long, steady hill, starting easy and pushing through the top of the hill, recovering on the downhill, and starting all over again. The hill on 40^th is probably about 3 or 4/10ths of a mile long, moderately steep, with a leveling off at the top. Jill's protocol is to start off easy, and then about 80% of the way to the top, pick up the pace and push through the flat section to the turnaround at the tree.

So we started off the morning with spin class. Rather than following the endurance ride format of class, I spent the hour doing a focused ride maintaining 85 rpm at AeT+20. Tough, but doable. But my legs weren't exactly fresh to start off the repeats. Then, a quick change to a dry shirt, and a roughly ¾ mile jog to the hill, and it was time to hit it.

Julie was already there doing repeats, and soon after we arrived, Jill & Joann showed up. Jill said "6 repeats" – oy. Plus the 1 on the way back to the club equals 7 total.

Well, the first one went really well, but each subsequent repeat was got harder, and seemingly longer. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) we didn't quite have time for all 6, since we both had an early meeting, but we did do 5. I already know that the more we do the repeats, the stronger I'll get. I won't say the easier the repeats will get, because they won't. They'll always be hard, they'll always hurt. But I will get stronger, potentially faster, and get to the top with a lower heart rate. I'm looking forward to that.

Of course, Jill let us know that over the next 8 months as we prep for IMCdA, we'll be adding to the number of repeats we do in a given workout, working up to 8, then 10, then putting 10 repeats at the mid-point of a 2 hour run. Whew – now that's suffering.

In the meantime, I'll settle for the short term benefits this will give me to kick some butt at SOMA.