Today was supposed to be about running up hills for the NRC HM plan but there are no hills round here. Coach Bennett seemed to say in the weekly introduction that I could do it on the flat so I took him at his word and set off over the snowy pavements to the stadium.
First up, a five minute warm up run through a stand of trees nearby. The temperature was around zero but I'm loving the feeling of cold on my skin and warmth under my clothes. Then it was on to the pristine small running track, virgin snow, tempting.
The intervals were supposed to be up a hill for 45 seconds at 10k pace, a 75 second recovery, then 10 seconds up the hill at Best Pace with a 45 second recovery. The recovery was to give time to get to the bottom of the hill so you could run up again, I just walked around slowly.
Started off running round and round the track, probably doing a fast 5k pace instead of the 10k and really going for it on the Best Pace bits. After 3 or 4 intervals I spotted a small incline so after that 45 second run I used the recovery time to walk over there to do the 10 second runs then back to the track for the longer run. I asked Mr OBK who was doing a gentle jog to take a picture of me running up the hill but he reckoned the building behind was way too ugly, but then he spotted another short slope with a church in the background so I ran up and down there instead.
Looking at the figures afterwards the splits on the NRC app look like I was going way quicker on the 10k pace bits than the Best bits, but the Garmin Connect graph of pace shows the truth, five wide spikes with a pretty good pace, interspersed with five narrow spikes which look like they are under 6 mins/km, very fast for me.
This was a great way to spend a chilly morning, when I get back to the UK I'll try it again on a proper slope, the one I run down on my Parkrun 😂.
NRC Hill Repeat (on the Treadmill) 
Running away the cobwebs!
Week 4 done and dusted
Killer hill?
