Lots of people left me comments yesterday asking me the specifics of my hour-long hill workout.

Basically I've become super obsessed with the "Hill" setting on the treadmill at my gym because it pre-programs hills of all different lengths and steepness and I don't have to worry about messing with any settings while I'm running. Normally, I'm not a fan of treadmill running, but I recognize it can be kind of useful in some situations, like when you need to run really steep hills.

Treadmill settings:

• Hill setting
• Level 10 (my treadmill gives me the options of 1--20. I've found 10 and 11 are plenty of butt kicking enough, especially for longer workouts)
• Time: 60 minutes
• Speed: 6.0/10 minute miles (Pick a speed that's similar to what you run up hills outside, but adjust based on length of your workout)

The Warm-up:

The program starts with five about minutes of what I call "rolling hills." The incline isn't very steep, but you do a lot of up and down to get your legs ready for the steep climbs later in the workout.

Once your warmed up, the real workout starts.

The Workout:

The workout is broken into cycles that are about seven to eight minutes in length. In each cycle, you spend one minute climbing and then one minute recovering and the hills get progressively larger each minute within the cycle.

For example, my first hill was a 4.5, the next was 5.5, the third was 6.5 and the last was 7.8.

Then after a minute of recovery, the cycle would repeat again.

It was a pretty brutal workout and unless you live in a super hilly area with hills of all different sizes, I don't think it would be all that easy to replicate outside. So as annoying and boring as treadmill running can be, I think there are certain instances when it's valuable.

Plus I get a real kick out of watching the little hills show up on the treadmill monitor as I'm covering inclines. Watching the hills come and go on the screen almost takes my mind off the fact that I'm stuck in a gym on the treadmill.

I hope that answers your question about my hill workout, but if it doesn't or if you have more questions just let me know in the comments.

Last night I had a hot date with the treadmill.

And when I saw hot, I do mean really, seriously hot.

It was a little bit stuffy in the gym when I got there, so I knew I would be a giant ball of sweat by the time I finished my run.

My plan was to do one hour of hill repeats. If that sounds like torture, it's because that's kind of what I was going for.

It had been way too long since I'd gotten in a run and I knew I wanted to do something that was super high intensity to make up for my slacking. (And to make up for all the guacamole I have been eating this week.)

Twenty-five minutes into my run, sweat was dripping in my eyes so badly I could barely see. I kept trying to wipe them on my shirt, but it was soaked through. By the time I was finished, I could have literally wrung the sweat out of my sports bra and shorts. 

I obviously looked super cute! (But no post-workout picture today. I was afraid the camera would slip out of my sweaty hands and break.)

The workout was intense and the hills were really killing me at the end, but honestly, nothing feels better than finishing a run and knowing you don't really have much more left to give. I love walking out of the gym knowing I actually worked hard and didn't just phone it in.

And it turns out that a good run was all I needed to clear my head of all the stress. I slept like a baby last night as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Chances are I won't have time to fit in another run until Friday, but I have softball to look forward to tomorrow night, which is at least some mild physical activity.

Do you follow up time off from running with super intense workouts, or do you ease back into things more slowly?

With the heat index as high as it was yesterday and the weather folks advising the air quality was poor for outside activity, I took my workout to the treadmill.

It's been months since I've run on the treadmill, since it's pretty much my least favorite form of running, but the weather is out of my control and you've just gotta do what you've gotta do.

I decided I'd mix it up to keep things interesting and ended up with a killer 40-minute hill workout.

I used the treadmill's pre-programmed hills setting set to level 10 for the first half of the workout. The workout started with a long, gradual climb and then alternated between one minute of steep climbing and one minute flat. The steepest elevation I climb in the first half was the 7.0 setting.

I paused the treadmill half way through to stretch (my left quad was tight from hiking on Sunday) and grab some water.

The second half I kicked the elevation up a notch and alternated running up steeper hills. I think this time the highest climb was and 8.0 or an 8.5.

Mixing things up like this actually made the 40 minutes go by pretty quickly and it was a killer workout. I was completely drenched in sweat by the time I finished.


It kind of looks like I just stepped out of the shower.

The forecast for the rest of the week is just as hot and humid as yesterday, so I may be spending a lot of time on the treadmill this week. If you have an entertaining treadmill workout, feel free to share it in the comments so I have some variety this week!

When I run by myself, I tend to walk up parts of some of the bigger hills on my route to help save my legs so they don't fatigue too quickly.

(Source)
My hills are smaller than these

I never really thought that my quick walk breaks could be having a negative impact on my running until I got smoked on hills this weekend running with the group. The guys were pushing to the tops of the hills like it was no big deal, and I was dying and trying to sneak in walk breaks.

I realized the only way I'm going to improve my endurance on hills is if I start making a better effort to run up the hills on a regular basis.

So on yesterday's 4.5 mile run, I made it my goal to run the entire length of every hill, no matter how slow my overall times were.

Running up all the hills definitely wasn't easy and there were a couple times when I was really tempted to walk, but I didn't. I just kept pushing, putting one foot in front of the other, and I made it to the top of all of them.

And it turns out running up the hills didn't fatigue my legs enough to make a huge difference in my splits on a shorter run. My average pace for the run was 9:13 per mile.

I'm hoping that by training my brain to get used to running up the hills, I'll be able to hang with the guys better during our weekend long runs.

Between staying up to watch the Phillies win the NLCS (again! Whooo team!) and running an extremely hilly new route yesterday, I am dragging today. I hit snooze twice this morning and each time the alarm went off I was startled out of a deep sleep. But I've fueled up with a delicious omelet from our cafeteria downstairs (because I was a starvin' marvin this morning) and I'm feeling more awake already.

My quads, however, are not loving the fact that the 7.2 mile route I mapped out yesterday was full of hills. I didn't know it and certainly wasn't expecting it. I used Mapmyrun to try out a new, longer and pretty much unfamiliar route where I knew there would be two hills. But turns out, I picked a realllly hilly route. I did a ton of climbing and then a lot of up and down through some big rollers.

And lucky me, most of the big, big hills were out the end of the route.

My quads are trashed, especially might right one.

I was trying to embed the elevation profile from Mapmyrun, but can't seem to figure out a way to do it. I know how to embed the map, but that's not what I was going going for.