an old favorite

I wasn't sure I'd get to walk today, as the weather was iffy. It did snow last night, but it wasn't cold enough to stick to the street, just to the grass, and it stopped before I got up. Yay! I decided to do my old favorite route, SugarHouse Park. It's quite hilly, and so usually I avoid it when I'm trying to keep a certain training pace, but I think hills are actually quite beneficial, so I may do it more. In fact, I did manage to keep less than a 6:30/km pace on the hills today, though not without a good amount of effort.

The first km is a killer, up the steep hill by my house. It's always slow, and this time I did it feeling heavy-legged, in 7:18. I thought I was going to have a hard time after that - my legs were quite tired, and hamstrings still sore from weights on Friday. But I picked up the pace as much as I could and the 2nd km (slight downhill) was 5:59! I have no idea where that came from. I was encouraged, and kept pushing. It was chilly at 35F (2C), but beautiful with the snow and the pink glow from the sunrise. I love SugarHouse Park.

Around the park I went, doing the hills in quite respectable split times of 6:25 and 6:19, and then still managing the slight uphill to the 5th km in 6:34. Then I got to coast down the nice big hill at a 5:42km pace for the last 0.8 km and finished in 37:14 for 6:25/km, with ave HR of 153. I thought my ave HR was higher, as at times I was really pushing. Overall I'd say it was a moderately hard effort, about like yesterday. It was therapeutic for sure.

Garmin connect data here.

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I'm about to go to the gym and hop on the bike for some cross-training. Jim suggested that extra cross-training was a really good way to improve my speed, so I am going to take it to heart and do the extra work. I'll enjoy a good book while I'm there at least :).