Changing Day

Another day, another positive session, both for the body and the mind.

As with yesterday's traditional long ride, today's session was another traditional long run.

For this long run I headed back up into the Perth hills to run on the trails around Darlington. It has been a while since I have run up there, but it is such an effective place to run that it has always been my intention to go back.

What makes it effective you ask?

Well for one, the trails are all gravel, so it is pretty easy on the body. You can get in a good long run without it destroying your joints. Two, the runs are great for strength work. It is the hills after all, so you spend most of the time either running up hill or down. If you think about the point of a long run, which is more about fatiguing the muscles than the cardiovascular system, running in the hills is quite perfect. Three, it makes for a great variable run. Running in the hills is almost like heading out for a fartlek session. Your intensity varies hugely as you head up hills and down. Sometimes those periods of high intensity are short, sometimes they are long, just like a fartlek session. Finally the hills are just a great way to get in a change of scenery. Doing long runs over the same terrain week in and out can wear a little thin. Heading out to the hills gives you a chance to see some new paths and also gives you a mental break away from always focusing on pace, since pace can be a bit irrelevant when you are running over hilly trails.

All good stuff.

Rainy Trails

The plan for the run today was for a bit of distance and a few efforts. Once I headed to the hills though the run varied a little from what had been originally planned. For one, I decided to not focus on the specific efforts and just run. As I have said, there were plenty of periods where the intensity was high, which more or less served the same purpose as the planned efforts. Plus chasing specific paces in the hills is pretty hard, you might be running flat out up a hills but only going at 5:15/km. You may not be going fast, but you are certainly working.

The other variation on the plan was that I ended up running a bit further than I originally intended. I am not normally an advocate for trying to catch up on training, but with my struggle with rhythm this week (and the crazy heat) I had missed a run on Australia Day. As a result of the missed run I felt like my weekly mileage was a little low. Having gone to the effort of getting up to the hills, I thought I might as well make the most if it and get in a bit more distance. I didn't go crazy, nor did I try and cover the run that I missed earlier in the week, I just got in a couple more kms. Not something I would do regularly but this morning it seemed to fit in nicely.

The running itself went okay. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but I am not sure how much that was because of running form and how much it was about the terrain. In certain areas of the hills you can find yourself running up hill for 10km or so, which as you can imagine isn't a lot of fun. It can make for some slow progress, as a result my over all pace was hardly impressive, but that goes with the territory. The average heart rate and general feel of the run was about spot on though I think. I certainly finished the run feeling like the session had achieved its purpose, getting out and fatiguing the legs.

The other reason that the run went okay was because of the weather. The weather in Perth has been pretty warm over the last few days. On Thursday the temperature maxed out over 40 degrees and yesterday it got quite close to 40 again. When the temperature reaches up towards 40 I usually keep well away from the hills. If it is going to be 40 degrees in Perth, it is going to be even hotter in the hills. Doing a long run in the hills can be a bit of a challenge of managing heat stress and dehydration. Today though the weather changed in a big way. Rather than 40 degrees and blazing sun today we had mid 20s and steady drizzle. The cooler temperatures and rain made for wonderful hill running conditions and made it quite easy to make it through a long session. Lovely.

That makes two weeks in a row now that I have managed to get out and have good long runs. The progress is slow, but so far it has been steady, which is just what it needs to be.