I rarely post, but so many of you post such lovely running stories so here's one from me today.
I've signed up to do a 10k at the end of October 😱 and I've been following the Nike 10k training program (thank you CBDB for the plan with links!). I'm starting week 6 so I was supposed to do 10k last run, but I chickened out and repeated the 8k from the week before... maybe next week 😉
Today's is a 31-minute guided run, not too hard I think, so I load it up and set off.
At 29 minutes we're just about back home, so I tell my husband I'll be back in two minutes and he goes inside while I run to the end of the block.
Except --
at the end of the block, Coach Bennett says "we'll be back in a bit" and goes silent as he does ...
when we are not near the end.
So I trot around the neighbourhood some more, up this street, down that, listening for any clues that the end is near.
Finally - finally! - after not 31 minutes but 50, I hear the magic words! 5-4-3-2-1, finished! I hobble home, where I see that I loaded the wrong guided run🙄. This was the one I'm meant to do after the next run. Well done me 🙄 for running an extra 2.5ish km, accidentally. 🤦♀️
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hoyden
Graduate10
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Yes I was thinking I might skip the next run (the hilly one) because I'm not sure the only hill near here is long enough for the run. Do you know how it works? Am I meant to run up the hill during each "effort" or is it one long hill for all those efforts put together? (That would be One Big Hill.)
Since I've just done the run after the hill one, maybe my next run will be the Tempo run with Paula Radcliffe. 🤔 I have a couple of days to decide... I'm a bit nervous about getting all the training in because next week swimming starts and I probably won't run every other day like I am now.
Hillier run: you don’t need a long hill, or a steep one.
That’s my experience. I also initially worried if I had a hill that is hilly enough, but my more experienced hubby just told me to use that little gradient path at the entrance of my trail, that winds up to a farm. As you run up and down, as you run to and fro, it really doesn’t need a specific hill of specific length or gradient. As long as it goes uphill a bit, it will do it’s magic.
At least that’s my experiences.
Loads of new runners, including me, have found hill runs a surprisingly fun thing to do, so if you haven’t done a NRC hill run before, I’d suggest not to skip it and join in the fun.
But the beauty of the plan is that you can , as you suggest, skip some runs.
Looking forward to reading how you take your plan forward after your awesome run!
This is exactly the sort of thing I’d do! Well done on a great run-even if it wasn’t quite the one you’d planned! 😂 Loved the run report.
Hill, hillier, hilliest is one of my absolute favourite NRC runs. All you need is a shortish slope if some kind. You run up the hill and jog (or walk) back down so that really limits how long it needs to be. The longest interval is only a minute, then you’re heading back down again. It’s so much fun-I can’t wait to hear what you think of it!
I find five minutes warm up isn’t quite long enough to get me out of the toxic ten before having to run up the hill, so I tend to run gently for another five minutes before starting the guided run.
That NRC programme is so flexible that it doesn’t matter at all which order you do the runs in or whether you skip some altogether. When I did their half marathon plan, I just did a long run, a recovery run and one of the speed runs each week. I skipped the rest. That worked really well, and when I came to repeat the plan, it meant I was still doing new runs.
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Don't tell Coach B what I did ;) 
Oops!
