Something new, something old...

I had a shot on Tuesday at that Hill Bounding I talked about recently. It was quite interesting. We have a small soccer oval near us with a very steep slope for spectators - probably about 20m up at marginally less than 45 deg. Turning right or left at the top of that leads you down a much more gentle 100m or so. After a couple of k warm up, I stretched and then started the session.

Very high knees & arm action, driving from heels on the ground to toes pointing down at the high point of the step, bounding up the slope but only moving forward very slowly (ie very small steps) so that it takes a little while to get to the top. As noted in the stuff I read (and also mentioned by Dr Pain when I talked to him about it), the heart rate goes through the roof pretty quickly, so it's not a session for people on low-HR training. At the top, run down the gentle slope, leaning down the hill and keeping the cadence high. The idea is to continue onto a flat area for a little while, but on this oval you just hit fence! :-) Finally, walk back to the start as recovery, and repeat.

I ended up doing 7 reps, as I felt good the whole way through. After I got home and cooled down, I discovered that maybe 7 reps were too many... The tops of my calves decided that they were going to spend the rest of the *week* complaining. Still, it's exactly the same spot that started to give me grief at the end of the Quarry Rd laps last week, so it looks like it's doing the right thing, and it'll definitely stay in the training repertoire (albeit with a few less reps).

So, that's the new. The old, alas, is that my back decided to go west again on Thursday morning. I got out of bed and could hardly walk. I still managed the ride into work (for some odd reason, the riding position was not uncomfortable), but I had to ring tiger angel and ask her to pick me up at the end of the day. Hence, no Run Club, and no Megalong to Pluvi that was planned for Saturday. I'm sure that run was going to hurt, but not doing it hurts more :-(

I had a chat to Dr Pain, and his words of wisdom were "see me 9:30 Monday, give it lots of warmth and lots of gentle movement, like water walking, running and swimming". Hence, I went to the pool on Friday, doing 10 min water running to warm up, and then swam with flippers for 600m. It felt pretty smooth, though on the last 50 I started to notice a bit of tension in my back. (I did try a final 50m without flippers, which was an utter joke. Any semblance of form went out the window as self preservation and a desperate desire to breathe asserted itself. :-) ).

So here I sit, feeling miserable about missing my private Megalong massacre, but still hopeful of doing it next week (or the week after, or... :-))

Gnome