Breaking through the comfort zone
Pictures always make hills seem so easy. This is about halfway down the first hill I tackled today.
One of the biggest things that I believe leads to injuries, and part of what led to mine, is falling in a comfort zone. Same pace, same route, same thoughts, same EVERYTHING. One new piece of advice I’ve developed in the past few months, but haven’t really said is: Don’t get too comfortable.
By that I mean to change things up. It doesn’t have to be all the time. Just make sure a couple of times a week that you do a run isn’t comfortable. Do something different, take a different route, run at a different time of the day. Something.
As my confidence continues to build, today I once again did something with running that I haven’t done in a while — hill repeats. While no run of mine can avoid hills, rarely have I done hill repeats on my own. I’ve done them in training groups and I did them in high school track 16-plus years ago. In my almost 4-year-old blog, the term “hill repeat” comes up in just four posts (five including this one).
That’s a problem that get it’s first fix today.
I was going to do a trail run today for the first time since my DNF in June. When I got to the trails, I realized how bad of an idea that was after so much rain this week, especially since I had my dog. After I got to the bottom of a hill of the trail I took, I did most of my run in grass. I then did four hill repeats on a hill that was just under a tenth of a mile long. Then I ran about a tenth of a mile over to another spot and did two more on an even steeper hill of about the same length. Then I went along some rolling hills and circled back around and did one more. After running back toward where the trail dumped me out, I ran up one more a nice long hill of about two-tenths of a mile back toward my vehicle. I finished the run off on some gravel and pavement for about a half mile.
It was pretty humbling, but very rewarding. My dog was dragging pretty good, too. All told, it was only 3.1 miles, but definitely the toughest 3.1 miles in a while.
I have to add hill repeats to my workouts. HAVE TO. While the hills are very tough around here, it’s a pretty awesome feeling to tackle them more than once. I know the benefit I get from them … I just have to do it.
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I can't agree more that variety can help improve your training, prevent staleness, and help circumvent injuries. I love the spontaneity today!
Hills are something I've decided to do more of as I run outside more. There re plenty around here, but I can easily avoid them. So now its just a matter of doing it and making some improvements. Nice workout.
Nice job on the hill repeats! I used hill workouts twice this winter to help break up the monotony of the treadmill and definitely want to get more in now that I'm back outside.
Maybe plan on hills once a week? I used to do that long,long,lonnnngggg ago.
It's great you finished feeling inspired to incorporate more of this too. Signs of a healthy runner.