4x90secs destroys my legs...aka Running Hill Workouts

With the arrival of spring (but not necessarily the departure of SNOW!), I switch up the running a bit by adding some short, hard intervals. This is either my hill workout or a track workout with some 800s and 400s. Because I dislike the 800s and 400s so much, I tend to do the hill workout more often.

For reference, there is an article about hills over at triathlon.competitor.com. Go to http://running.competitor.com/2011/04/training/learn-to-power-over-hills-hill-repeat-repeat-repeat_24020 for the whole thing. For some info on my hill, keep reading!

I call my hill the Alpha Kilo....meaning "Ass Kicker," appropriate enough because it never fails to kick my ass. It is the perfect lunch workout (unless it's raining, which then the trail gets too muddy and slippery). From my office, it's a ten minute jog over to the bottom of the hill, including five minutes on a trail and under or through the junipers. On a nice, hot, dry day, I really like being amongst the junipers and sagebrush.

Anyway, the hill is .15 miles with 177 feet gain, giving it an average grade of 24.6%. See the hill at http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/31789296.

This hill is great! It takes me a bit over 90 seconds to get to the top. Only the last 45 seconds are in pure "I need it to stop NOW!" pain that gets my heart rate up to its true max. I used to think my max heart rate was about 184; then I did these hills really hard for the first time and found that I can still get my heart rate above 190! That really hurt that day. But the pain of these hills is a fun pain, whereas running 400's is a bad, no-fun-at-all pain.

The standard hill workout is a 10 minute jog over to the base of the hills, a few minutes of mental prep, and then I hit 3 or 4 reps on the hill....90 seconds up, 2.5 minutes down (very hard to keep traction coming down), 90 seconds to prep for the next rep, and then the next reps. Then it's a ten minute jog back to work. Total about 45 minutes, and I am COMPLETELY DONE for the day afterwards.

Think about that. I only have to do 3-4 reps of 90 seconds each to completely destroy my legs for the day. That's an effective workout right there.