Hell Repeats

As Mindy and Jeff are preparing for the Mt Washington Road Race in a few weeks, and now that Pineland is over, they decided a good hill workout was in order. Since Jim and I are now training for the Escarpment Trail Race, James for Hardrock, and Don... not sure what Don's plan is other than maintaining his status as fast and strong, but anyway, we all met at the Blackstrap Hill Preserve in Falmouth for hill repeats. The mile long hill Jeff planned for us to run on was part of the Blackstrap Hell Trail Challenge last fall so the workout quickly became tagged Hell Repeats.

I had the idea of doing a ladder workout so on our way down to the bottom the first time we defined spots that roughly broke the hill up into thirds. The plan was to run 1/3 of the hill up, back down, 2/3 up, down, all the way up, down, 2/3 up, down, 1/3 up, down, 2/3 up, down and finish with a full ascent back up to the top. Apart from a wrong turn on one of the descents I managed to stick to the plan. Everyone else pretty much went at their own pace which meant even though we weren't all running together we saw a lot of each other going back and forth.


Hopefully we'll make these hill workouts, or some variation, a regular feature. It was fun in that painfully rewarding kind of way. This hill isn't too steep, but it's long and has some technical sections which make it great training both up and down.

time: 1:23:47
distance: 9.04 miles
pace: 9:16

weather: high 60's, clear sky

conditions: mix of wet, muddy, dry, rocky, grassy. Always hilly

gear: Inov-8 Mudroc 280, Wright Socks, shorts, t-shirt, hat