Tuesday 12/15 - Hills

We met up at 5:15 am for a hill workout and had a good sized group - Sean, Bill, Luis, Dan Kahn, Joe Flores and Vaughn Gibbs. We ran about a 4 miles warmup and then did 16 hills ~3.5 miles on two of the hills on the cloverleaf. For a while I thought I might actually be able to stay with the group. Sean was running the hills hard, but walking for part of the recovery so even if they beat me by 2 or 3 seconds on the hills, I could stay with them. I think I hung close for about 6 hills and then everyone started jogging more on the recovery and I needed more recovery time. Joe Flores had dropped a little off and we were running about the same pace, but midway through I think he may have skipped one of the hills to get some extra recovery and catch back up with the group so I ended up running the rest by myself. The one thing that concerned me is the tendons or ligaments across the back of my left knee seemed kind of tight and I didn't have any explosiveness or feel like I could push it as hard as I wanted to on some of the hills. I think that my tight hamstrings/quads/groin/calves/anything other muscle group in my legs are getting to me. I think I really need to work on my flexibility some because I felt like my range of motion was a little limited. I've experienced this tightness before, but it seems like I could do some easy stretching which would help and as I would get warmed up it wouldn't be an issue, but I could feel tightness throughout the entire workout. It seems worse when I'm running the hills where I'm trying to get really quick turnover and the footing isn't as solid as the road. After the workout I did a 2 mile cooldown for ~9.5 miles total.