9/8 - 9/10 Workouts

9/8 : Hills, hills and more hills. Wednesday's workout called for 2 x 1200 uphill then 2 x 300 uphill and that means Hartshorne Woods. The one bright spot was that I didn't have to run hills weighted. I was a little pressed for time and cheated the warm up at little and left out the form drills. In retrospect I had plenty of time, I really just didn't feel like running back to the parking lot and the footing at the base of the hill isn't the place I want to be working on my form. The 1200's are only hard the last 300 and the 300 are hard because your running at least a 12-13% grade. After each interval I gave myself 1 minute recovery before a made my way back down the hill. After the hills and cool down I spent some time in the parking lot doing some general strength (air squats, walking lunges and lateral squat walks). From Hartshorne I headed over to Thompson Park to meet with one of my clients and then off to practice with my xc team. After practice I did my strength workout at RBR, 40 x squat clean thrusters w. 95 lbs. Tough strength work but I'm committed to improving my lifts even if that means being extremely uncomfortable. Learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.


9/9's workout only called for strength training, consisting of 3 x 3 front squat w. 2 minutes recovery between set. After my third set I took 5 minutes recovery before I started 4 rounds for time of 10 x 55 lb dumb bell swings, 25 double unders. My double unders are getting better but still need to work on my technique in order to do them unbroken. It was a solid effort and I feel like I'm making gains in strength.


9/10's focus was on long intervals of 4 x 10 minutes w. 2 minutes recovery. I've never been a fan of long interval, mainly because they hurt and hurt for a long time. Before I started I knew there was a good chance I was going to have some problems and sure enough my foot was smoking half way through the first interval. My foot problem is definitely caused by my over striding, good news is with a little work and a little concentration I can fix this problem. Unfortunately my foot wasn't the only discomfort I experienced during the workout. It's definitely a gut check for me when I do long interval but I've come a long way since my early running days but at the same time if you're not thinking about quitting you're probably not going hard enough.