Hills!

Wednesday, September 07, 2016 · Mike Davis

Good morning!

Grab your coffee and pull up a chair.

Many of you are enjoying a shorter week and I hope that it is going super! I am busy with final preparation for “Reach the Beach” 2016 which is a little over a week away. Holy Cow! I am not sure what has been more challenging; preparing our “NFLR team” or preparing my running. Yesterday Kathy brought me to a place she thought would be good for me to get a hill workout in and she picked a good one. In the dead of the day (noon), in mid-eighties temperatures, I did my “hill workout.” I certainly do not have time to prepare for the hills that will face me running from Bretton Woods to Hampton beach but that was not actually my goal yesterday. Good training for hilly runs that “Reach the Beach” runners face encounter is actually training runs that present rolling hills. I have not done any of that!

So what was the value of running a hill workout yesterday? Running controlled hill repeats accomplishes a couple important training goals. Strong legs are obviously a key component of running and nothing can help your legs get stronger than hill repeats. While you do not want to kill yourself running hills, it is quite beneficial to push fairly hard going up. Pushing helps you get stronger and improves your overall running efficiency. The other benefit of hill repeats is improvement in your running conditioning. When runners are behind schedule in their training, we often get them doing hill repeats and while they will not fully make up for lost training, they are helpful. Because I lost some time earlier due to my calf I definitely have been playing catch up with my training. I have used multiple strategies to include run/walking, intervals and now the hill repeats. Quite honestly I messed up as I should have been doing hill repeats starting back in August. This weekend I may actually forego a final long run instead do another hill workout. Then we will see come next Friday!

No Finish Line Running is race directing the 2016 “Apple Harvest 5K” race Saturday, October 1st. If you are a friend to NFLR, I would hope that you will come show your support by getting signed up and running. “Apple Harvest” is an awesome race and this year will be the best one yet! Here is the link: http://www.dovernh.org/apple-harvest-day-5k-road-r... Hope to see all our running community friends and their friends!

That is all the chat I have for this morning. Have a great Wednesday and hit the hills!

God Bless!

Mike