Juneathon day 14. Hills. Oh my god, hills.

Very short of time this morning so I decided to go for a quick run around the block incorporating a few hill repeats. I've run up hills (well, probably more shallow slopes than hills - does a railway bridge count as a hill?) before when out on ordinary runs but I've never made the hill the point of the run before. I know it's a good idea to incorporate hill training into one's routine but that feels like something that only hardcore runners do (wait - I've been running every day for two weeks now. Does that make me a hardcore runner?) and I've always been a little nervous of trying it. Rightly so, it turns out. 

Deceptively hard work

I am 'fortunate' to live more or less at the top of a hill so there are hills of varying degrees of steepness in every direction around our house. Today I warmed up with a brisk jog around the town and then headed for Oxford Road. It's a straight slope up for about 225 metres. When you're walking up it the slope feels pretty slight so I wasn't too worried. Hollow laugh. For the first half of the first run it felt perfectly manageable. Then it suddenly got hard. Then it got really hard. Up and down three times by the end of which I could hardly breath. Gosh - hills are hard work. 

The devil's hill

Then I decided to finish things off (almost literally) with a run up Castle Street. This is about 150 metres but really substantially steeper than Oxford Road. Getting to the top of Castle Street was the closest I've come to feeling like I might throw up after a run since I was forced to run cross country at school. Oh. My. God. 

Looking at the stats I see that Garmin estimates a whopping 13 metres of elevation. This cannot possibly be right. All that pain for so little gain? I can't believe it. 

So, in summary this looks like a pretty puny run by recent standards. A fairly short distance at a slowish pace. But don't be deceived. This was the closest I've come to dying from over-running (if that's a thing) since I started running again. 

Day 14 2.24k in 15 minutes

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