Hills

I am pleased to announce the full return of my running mojo!  I have felt well energized and motivated all week, and have enjoyed a couple of really good (and rewarding) runs.  I have entered my first running event of 2013 (the Hutt Valley Trail Event) which is on next weekend (excited!) and have even managed to earn a little extra money to help fuel my running habit.

The most exciting news of all it that I have finally found an excellent steep hill training ground, which has quelled all of my angst about getting enough hill work in before the Routeburn Classic.   The 14km return trail climbs 300m (almost straight up) before following the ridge-line and descending the same distance to the turn around point, then returning via the same route.  On Thursday I did ran the whole 300m climb (which was wicked) with only a couple of 30 sec pauses.  It was definitely hard work, but beaut running through trees to emerge so much higher up at the look out.  I saw heaps of walkers and a couple of other runners, so it is a popular trail.  The downhill return felt longer than the initial uphill slog, and I was careful to keep my stride in check and to try and minimise the impact on such a steep slope. It was such a nice feeling to run down thinking ("holy crap, I ran up this? that's steep and consequently rather impressive").  My quads and gluts have been reminding me of how well I did, and its nice to know that I have given my muscles a bit of a run for their money, and working on something new.

My next goal is to make the entire climb without stopping, and then to be able to complete the return climb without stopping too!  Its fantastic to have found a really challenging training ground.

My friend Kristy is planning to enter the AMI Round the Bays 1/2 marathon that I am also planning to run.  She is light-years faster than me, and stands a good chance of doing really well if she achieves her sub 1:30 goal (the sort of time that I can only dream of at this stage, but then I suppose that the field needs some rather slow runners, to make the fast runners feel really good about their excellence).  It will be nice to enter an event with a friend (even though she will finish an hour before me :-) GO KRISTY GO!

Next week, the local running club starts hosting weekly 7km fun runs which I am planning to attend for some extra and sightly faster paced training, so I have heaps of running-y goodness to look forward to.

Yay for running and yay for 2013.