Hill reps in the gym

It was too cold to be running outside. The sign said minus 8, which was why it felt like the bise whipping of the lake had nearly frozen my left ear off on the way into work. Looked out my woolly Scotland hat, which will go great with the whole smart private banker look.

Armed with my free day pass I rocked up the top floor of Globus and tailgated some guy past the security door and acted like I owned the place. Worked ok until they spotted the name on the pass and "Christine" was instantly summoned and like a scene from "I wanna quit the gym" in Friends she duely applied the pressure.

But I managed to defer the "rendez-vous" until after my "entainment".

It was packed (except for the out side terrace) so I found a spot and stretched off. A running machine became free and after I fought with the controls I eventually convinced it to let me do some reps. Seemed to be about half a km at 1.5 incline (recovery) and 3 for the hill. Nudged the rep pace up to a slow 10 or 12 and did the recovery at 10km/ph. So very slow. However, in front of the mirror I was able to focus on reducing the up and down movement on the recovery and think more about deliberately toeing off on the hill and driving the knees to the top. After 30mins of that I felt better on the hill but was still seeing up/down movement on the slower section, but did notice a much more even midesole striking, at first I was landing inside first and rolling to the outside but by the end there was little if any inside to outside rolling. Just over 5km cleared in 30mins.

Good session to mentally prepare for the mountain run at the weekend. Just venturing into the foothills, but need time on the new terrain and the guy I hope to go with wants to clear at least 16km. Eek. Time to get a map.