Tuesday 12/1 - Hills with Sean

Saturday after the long run I was chatting with Sean and told him I wasn't going to be able to make it out for hills on Monday morning and I thought between the race Thursday and ~22 miles on Saturday I wasn't going to be ready to thrash my legs more on Monday. He told me to come out Tuesday morning since he was going to be running hills then and he was going to be running them a little easier. I knew that I'd probably struggle to keep up even if he was running a little easier but since I had just run a great 10k I thought maybe it's just all mental and if I believe I can run with them in the workouts I won't have any trouble keeping up.

We met up at 5:30 am to start the warmup. It was about 50 degrees and a little breezy out but fortunately no rain. Sean, Bill Blancett, Dan Kahn and Luis Armenteros were all there. It was like a who's who of Houston running and me. We ran a 5 mile warmup over to memorial park and back to the park at Jackson Hill. My hamstring and piriformis were a little tight, but I spent a while stretching them. The workout plan was to run 16 hills (4 miles). We took off at the start and I was keeping up with the group the first couple of hills, but I could tell I was definitely breathing harder than everyone else. By the end of the 4th hill, I was still in relatively close contact but I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep up. I could keep pace on the uphill, but I needed to run slower on the recovery than they were going. After the first lap when i relaxed and decided not to try to keep up, I was able to run smoother and push the hills hard and take a little more recovery. Sean said afterwards since he was running the hills a little easier, he was going a little quicker on the recoveries. We did about a 1.5 mile cooldown for about 10.5 miles total.