Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Just what the Doctor (Steeve) ordered

Being a bit overly-cautious and horrified of risking injury, I turned to Coach Steeve for advice on the prescribed hill workout from the Katy Fit marathon schedule. I've never done a hill workout before and Steeve was sooooo helpful with his instruction. I won't do this with every workout but I want to describe this one in detail so that I'll remember what I did and so that others who want to can comment.

The venue was the access ramp at the Hwy 6 about a mile South of I-10. Before the access ramp, there are stairs leading up to the top of the levee. I started on the levee with about a 10 minute warmup. Then I went down the stairs and continued the short jog over the the bottom of the access ramp. Then I ran up the ramp at a target pace of 15:00 min/mile. That's about the pace I do my easy runs at. The distance of the ramp is ~.1239 miles (according to gmaps-pedometer). This is where Steeve's advice was GREAT in my opinion. Instead of running back down the ramp which is really where your legs and ankles take a pounding, I ran on top of the levee, back to the stairs and down, then continued my recovery over to the base of the ramp. I repeate this two more times and then ended with about a 6 minute cool down and walk back to the car.

Here is some info from each hill repeat. I'm not sure if this is right but I started out a little easy and tried to get a little faster with each repeat. I wasn't really watching my watch but rather going on feel. All I did with my watch was press the lap button.

Repeat   MaxHR   Pace
1   168   17:05
2   169   15:27
3   173   14:55

Other Stats
Total miles - 2.13 miles
Calories burned - 586

By the way, Steeve, sorry I didn't stop by SMARTie training to say hi. I started and finished early (around 7:30) and headed home. I did drive by and shout at y'all out the window. SMARTIES!!! Got some confused looks. LOL!!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I just joined the RW forums, and I followed your link to here, and I've got a question for you. What are you using to measure your HR, calories, etc.?

Unknown said...

My HR monitor from Polar measures my HR and calculates calories. Not sure what formula it uses for the calories or if it's accurate but I go by it anyway. E-mail me if you have any questions.

TX Runner Mom said...

Great advice from Steeeve! I'll have to check out the levee.

Anonymous said...

You nailed it, boss, well done!

All due credit to Chris McKeown who nearly 10 years ago said "let's not run back down the hill, let's go around the long way". We call 'em "McKeown's". Chris was out at SMART opening night tonight. Life is goooood.

Steeeve