Spaghetti Legs

Thursday hill repeats had to wait until today. On Wednesday I tripped on a client's cement door step and somehow bruised, sprained, or fractured my little toe on my right foot. I thought it strange that I hit the little toe and not the big one but Kevin pointed out that I am a bit pigeon toed, just another of the many things that make me so very cool. Anyway, I ran easy on both Wednesday and Thursday with the toe splinted. I did the splinting myself and it worked great! Today I was ready to test it on my weekly hill repeats.

I have been adding one 0.6 mile repeat each week and was scheduled for 5 repeats today. I was actually a little nervous starting out because I wasn't sure I had five of them in me. I left the heart rate monitor at home today because I didn't want to complicate things. I ran up as hard as I could and jogged slowly back down. Usually I am out earlier, but I had work to do this morning and didn't get started until 10:30 or 11:00. There were a lot of people out in their yards and I was a little self conscious about all my huffing and puffing and groaning and sweating.

My legs felt like cooked spaghetti on the last climb, something I haven't worked hard enough to experience in a very long time. I know from experience that when I get "cooked spaghetti legs" I am only a few steps from tossing my cookies on the side of the road. Then to make it worse, about 200 yards before the top of the climb a little rat sized dog came running out of nowhere and started biting at my ankles and trying to trip me up. I ashamed of it, but I tried to kick him. Don't worry, I missed. It did slow me down and it pissed me off a little, but I finished the hill strong with the dog yipping and biting at me in a ball of frenzied excitement.

Today's average pace for the climbs was 9:04! This is down from an average of 9:40 last week. I'm making good progress.