Hill runs
The hill
It’s pretty flat round here, but there’s a short hill with a decent gradient about 1.5 miles away ‘up’ in Walthamstow. On and off over the years I’ve done hill runs here. Run as fast as you can to the top, come down again, repeat.
Hill runs are meant to be good at helping various things: running form; strength; aerobic endurance; metal fortitude. They feel like good bang for your buck, in that it doesn’t take long and you feel like you’ve put some good work in. And they are mentally hard: which generally means it’s something worth doing.
I’ve been easing back into running over the last three months. I had the last drain taken out in early September (I had successive pipes put in me to drain a problematic abscess that was a by-product of the liver resection - which kept giving me pretty bad infections) and hadn’t done any high impact activity since early December 2021, so it was very much starting from scratch. I’ve done 1-3 reps here since, but this was the first time I settled into my pre-op usual dose: 5 reps.
Spot the “fade”
The hill is about 16-20 minutes away, so a perfect warm up. There’s quite a big fade in speed between 1-4, but on the last one I managed to claw it back a bit. The day after I could feel it in my lower back of all places. Apparently this is common. Something to do with the gradient, increased work and shorter stride length.
Also they have that thing that I sometimes experience with intense rowing machine sessions: that they leave you not very hungry, and have a slight appetite supression effect. The opposite of a long slow run, which I used to find makes me ravenous.