Well, probably because I said to Thon, “Hey, how about meeting at Barton Springs tomorrow morning for a hilly seven miles?” You see, hills are still by far my weakest point. I could use more speed, sure, but while I’m not as weak as I was earlier this year, every time I hit a steep hill I just shudder inside. Anyway, he agreed, and after a round or two of texting Carrie was up for the challenge as well.

Now, the Gazelles were meeting at RunTex and then running towards Zilker to do mile repeats. I actually left the house a little early today so that I wouldn’t end up driving through their warmup drills - that would require some explanation, I’m sure. Its not that I dislike mile repeats (actually, I do, but that’s another story), its that I really need hill work, and our marathon is a solid 2+ months after Chicago so we’re at a bit of a different point in the cycle than most of the Monday/Wednesday crowd. But anyway. We met up, chatted a little, and then headed out towards the MoPac waterstop.

Naturally, as we hit the trail, we passed all of the Gazelles on the way. Of course I was being super-subtle in my Gazelle singlet but it was dark; I’ll have to check later on today to see if anyone (or at least any blogger) recognized us. Heh. So we drank well at the waterstop and then retraced our steps back to Stratford, where we headed North. Now, Stratford is hilly, but we were assured that we weren’t running on Stratford, and sure enough we quickly turned into the nature center. Whose front entrance was accessible but whose exits were all closed. Ah, well, another half mile of warmup.

This is where the fun began for real. We climbed about 125 feet in a quarter mile, then had about two more miles of very rolling hills, finishing another 100 feet higher. Our steepest hill was that nasty one on Stratford that we hit both uphill and downhill. All told we ran about 3.5 miles of the hard stuff. But that’s just fine, because I finally figured out what was wrong with my hill form!

I should say that I think I did. The fact that I was keeping up with Thon and Carrie without feeling too terribly uncomfortable (at least not that much less comfortable than they were) is a pretty good sign though. You see, I’ve been doing a really good job at picking up my feet, but I realized today that I take far too many strides uphill because I’m not pushing back enough. I tried to channel Gilbert’s (somewhat macabre) “running on fire” drill technique, and it made a huge difference. I can’t wait to try it out again!

Anyway, we did about a three mile loop and were then heading back down Stratford towards MoPac for some more water. That’s when we got to run down the steep hill, and it was a blast: I clocked a 5:04 pace coming down the hill without even trying. Of course, that was more than offset by the 23:00 pace going up earlier, but still. Running fast downhill is just fun, and easy, so its something that always gets me fired up. After drinking more cold water (praise RunTex) we decided to cut the return short and head back the short way, still giving us well over seven miles for the day.

One thing that I should mention is that I was using my brand spanking new ForeRunner 305 for the first time. And you know what? It totally rocks. I mean, this is the unedited data dump. Is that incredible or what? The parts where it shows us running next to the road, we were on the trail. Amazing technology, and quite possibly the last GPS watch I’ll ever buy unless I lose this one like I did my 301. And hey, can you spot the waterstops in this HR graph?

Because of my renewed interest in GPS technology, I can say that we averaged 10:21 uphill, 9:33 downhill (being careful), and 9:50 on the flats. That may sound slow, but there was a lot of recovery going on. And actually, looking at my heart rate, it seems like we really were running it well. I was tapping 180 on the first few big hills but dropping down to 155 pretty quickly each time. Also, after I figured out my hill form about halfway through it dropped and never got over 175, even on some of the bigger peaks like the one at mile 4.25. I think that means something good. And before you say anything about the numbers, my HR has always been high… not sure why exactly, but I’ve stopped worrying about it.

Anyway, we finished the run and almost made it back when we were seen, so we went over to talk with Gilbert for a few minutes (and drink some of his much-appreciated Gatorade) before doing a well-received soak in Barton Springs (always free in the early mornings), then heading back for home. All told we did 7.3 miles in a relatively cool 80 degrees, and I’m in better shape because of it.

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