Progress

I went to the gym today after work to do the same running program as I had last week.  This past weekend I did not do the marathon of activities that I did the previous one and since Monday was a work day instead of a holiday I took it off from the gym and did two classes of karate as my only exercise.

I must admit I was unable to complete the program as written again this week, but progress was made.  It’s also comforting to know that the program as written is insane.  I climbed 1470 feet vertically along with the horizontal distance.  In case you are wondering just how to put that in perspective and how high 1470 feet is, well it’s at least as long as the vertical drop that the longest run that this ski resort has! 

Yeah in essence I ran UP a ski hill but likely over a greater distance as my time spent going uphill accounted for somewhere around 6km of the 10km run I did!

Now I did not complete to program as written due to three factors.  One is that I had to take a break and run along a flat for a couple minutes in between the first “hill” and the second, and the second and the third.  Second I had to go a little bit slower than I would have liked only running at 6.5 miles/hour on some of the hills,  and third I could not climb a 9% grade running at 8 miles/hour for 10 minutes.

9% is enough to get a warning sign.  The maximum I had to run up was 13%

However I did last longer than the previous week and that is progress and of course that is what this is all about.  It what a lot of things in life are about.  Progress.  If I can master this program in the next two weeks I’ll be sitting pretty for the mudrun as there will be nothing as crazy as running uphill for 6km in that race!

I feel better about this run that I did last week because there was measurable progress, and that makes things alright by me!