Frontloading the Hills

So, I'm still in Anchorage and had another run to do in my brother's neighborhood tonight. Last night I realized what a flat area I'm used to running on. As I mentioned, the hills really got to me.

So tonight, I decided to do something a little different. I modified my route a little bit, so that I'd have some hills right off the bat, and pretty much have them over with. I think it worked. The last tough climb I had, and for many experienced runners, it proably wouldn't have been much trouble at all, was about 3/4 of a mile into my run.

This was the first night where I only had one, one-minute break. Which meant 29 minutes of running. It all felt really good tonight. And I ran farther than I ever have before -- 2.95 miles. At least that's what I THINK I ran. Best estimate I could get from Google Earth measurements. I didn't have the luxury of checking the mileage on my Garmin Forerunner when I got home. When I first checked when I got home, it was rather puzzled by it all. It had been recording my time, letting me know when to walk and then when to start running again. And it had recorded my heart rate info correctly. But no mileage. No average speed. None of that. After getting mad at Garmin for a few minutes, I think I figured out what happened. While I was changing some of the settings inside tonight before I left, at one point the GPS asked me if I was indoors, and I told it yes. That usually turns off the GPS portion of the device, and unless you manually turn it back on or reboot the whole system, it doesn't come back on. Now it makes sense why, as I was running and would glance at my watch from time to time, some of the fields were blank. I didn't give it much thought at the time. But you can rest assured I will next time.

It was another late evening run, not leaving until about 10:30 PM. The great thing about running that late though is that it's STILL LIGHT. As I turned a corner to head down the final half mile stretch or so, the sunset was gorgeous. Great reminder of what a beautiful state I live in.

Tomorrow is a day with no training on the schedule. I'm looking forward to it. I'm just glad I got back to a week where I got all 4 of my training days completed!! And 2 of them on the road. Next week I'll be out of town starting Tuesday, but I should be able to get my training in regardless.