The Hills...

are alive....with the sound of music (in mmmyyyyy head). Yesterday, I had to do hill repeats. For those familiar with Central Park, I ran from E. 72nd to 90th (roughly a mile) on an effort level 3.5 (on a scale of 1 to 5). This terrain is called "Cat's Hill" and it has both steep incline and steady incline on the way up. We had to use the same effort level and shave off 20 seconds on the way down. We did this routine twice.

First mile up: 8:30 minutes
First mile down: 8:22 minutes
Second mile up: 8:52 minutes
Second mile down: 8:30 minutes

After this routine, we had to run with all our might from E. 72nd to the top of the hill (around E.79th) and then recover on the way down. We did this twice w/o timing.

Two lessons I learned:

1) I am horrible at math. The main reason I didn't shave off twenty seconds on the way down the hill is because I thought 8:30-20 seconds= 8:20. I don't know why. I call it my "runner's brain," sometimes similar to a "chemo brain" as my cancer survivor teammates say.

2) I have the strangest songs pop into my head. At yesterday's training, I had the following song in my head.


The beast being the marathon, I presume. It was a helpful song.
And I crashed when I got home.