There has not been much exciting going on with my running lately.  It hasn’t been bad; I’ve been getting the job done and for the most part fairly well.  I did twist my knee a little on a long run a week and a half ago, but I put my patience to the test and was very careful about what I did last week in the hopes of avoiding anything major.  I even tried shallow water pool running for 40 minutes in order to avoid too much impact.  I was definitely relieved that I had not signed up for the Hypothermic Half Marathon this past weekend.  (But if you ran it let me know – I’d love to hear how it was!)

My last two long runs were successful.  I pushed the pace a little faster than I should have for a 14k run at a 5:50 pace but it was a comfortable push.  This past weekend I went back to the recommended 6:04 pace and completed a very pleasant 16k run.  Nothing to complain about right?

But I admit it has been quite a while since a run excited me or made me say, “Wow, I did that?”  Thankfully today was one of those runs.  I missed my hill training last week because of my knee (though I did substitute it with a 9k flat run),  A few weeks ago when I started my hill training I met another runner doing the same.  While he is a good 15 years older than me, he is definitely faster than me – much faster!  But we decided to run our repeats together that day and have now met on a few Tuesday afternoons for more.  He is happy to “slow” down a bit to avoid injury, but still manages to push me way out of my comfort zone on hills.

I have done this 500m hill in the past, though it has probably been a good year since I did it for repeats.  My average pace going up the hill probably wasn’t much under the 6:00 min/km mark.  Today’s average of the six times we went up the hill?  5:15 min/km!!!  I’m not going to say it was easy, but I was surprised how much easier it felt than 2 weeks ago when we were doing the uphill around 5:32.  One thing I am doing differently is in the past I jogged down the hill while now we are walking down, so there is lots of recovery time.  But even with the walk break I never would have guessed I could run uphill at that pace, repeatedly at that.  I also freely admit I would never have bothered to try if it weren’t for the fact I had someone to push just that little bit harder.

Finally… a run to be excited about!