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BIG Skinner downhill repeats!

October 27, 2014 (Afternoon)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: 60, dry, awesome!

Comments:
Interesting run today! Great morning at work, then decided to tackle some legit downhill repeats at Skinner. There's a road that curly-Q's it's way up the ~350' butte, making it - in theory - perfect for a real long repeat. Mike's been doing 400-800m repeats on there, but (very oddly, in retrospect), I have not been. So after the debacle at AL50, I figured it's time to do some "easy" fast running.

Ran easy from work, directly to and up Skinner, keeping the HR low...ish. It was odd: the HR was spikey right away. Dunno why: allergies? still some illness? Not sure.

Summitted, with some pow-hiking up the steep south side, then found the very top (NW corner), then, went down! Once at the bottom, I took the switchbacks up the north side, right back to the start. The way it worked out, it was 0.85 miles down, and only 0.36 up! Almost 1:1 run time, which is about THE best you could do to max downhill and minimize the uphill.

What was odd, though, was that - even though I wasn't pushing the effort AT ALL - the HR was jacked. It was quite impossible, after the 2nd repeat, to keep the HR under 160. Ugh. Oh well. I needed the speed anyway, and who knows, maybe because I'm SO not used to running fast, the HR jacks just from trying to MOVE that fast?

Did FIVE repeats. The spilts (HR):

4:26 (153), 6:07 (142)
4:26 (157), 5:46 (143)
4:19 (165), 5:53 (144)
4:24 (164), 6:11 (144)
4:19 (167)

After that, I did a long cooldown along the river - the old school noon VRC loop. I had to run pretty slow to keep the HR <140, but I felt pretty good.

It felt amazingly GOOD to run that fast, "pounding" downhill. And I do think it's going to be a fantastic workout...and experiment in speed work and downhill stride development.

After that: good afternoon with three patients, then some interwebs activity. I've gotten a FEW people shell out some cash (and A LOT!), per my e-mail, which is nice.

Talked to my friend Max last night: things are, at least with his marriage, getting worse. He still hasn't "let go", but maybe, maybe, just now. But a lot of "damage" has been done, because he continue to push it. Ugh.

After that, I decided to go to Tap & Growler for some beer and "positive feminine energy". Had a couple fun chats with Callie, and quite coincidentally, she talked to me about Charlotte. Long story short: I fb msg'd Charlotte last night and we're *probably* going to go running together this week!

Not sure if I'm self-medicating here (I don't think so), but I feel I need to move on and meet people, and - from what Callie told me - Char is doing the same. Should be interesting spending some time with a tall, lithe, British blondie. :-)

twitter handle: @CL_Browning B-)