4 of 7 Hills

Edinburgh like most of Scotland is not flat. I know, shocking. In fact, there are seven hills in Edinburgh. The most well known are Castle Rock (home of Edinburgh Castle), Calton Hill, and Arthur's Seat. There's also Blackford Hill (home of the Royal Observatory), Braid Hills, Craiglockhart Hill, and Corstorphine Hill.

If you're crazy and so inclined, there's even the 7 Hills of Edinburgh race every year. There were 330 finishers this year, with the winner finnishing in 01:43:06.

Today I went on a walk of four of the seven hills with 5 other walkers. It took us 4 hours, 5 hours if you count the walk down the last hill to the pub at the end. Of course we stopped to admire the view at the top of each hill, so maybe it was only about 4 hours or so of walking and climbing.

Whatever. It works out to be over 8 1/2 miles of walking.

If you're interested, here is the map.



The walk was on top of my 4.71 mile run this morning. I'm not sure why I thought this was a good idea. The question now is whether I'm going to be able to walk tomorrow.

Even though it was feeling like my legs were going to fall off towards the end, it was a great day out! Pleasant walking company. A beautiful day after a brief but heavy downpour at the start. And a pint of cider at the end.

Here are some pictures of some of the views.

Castle Rock - This is a picture taken from the Esplanade. The blue stadium seating is for the Tatoo.

Scott Monument and the Prince's Street Gardens, walking from Edinburgh Castle to Calton Hill

Looking back toward Edinburgh Castle from Calton Hill

Top of Calton Hill

View of Arthur's Seat from Calton Hill

Looking back toward Calton Hill from Arthur's Seat

Top of Arthur's Seat

View from Arthur's Seat

View from from Arthur's Seat

Looking back toward Arthur's Seat from Blackford Hill

Toward the top of Blackford Hill

Braid Hills from the top of Blackford Hill

Craiglockhart Hill from the top of Blackford Hill

Corstorphine Hill from the top of Blackford Hill

Speedwork!

I have this problem that my running partner is now completely leaving me in the dust. Part of my problem is consistancy, which I'm working on. But Running Partner E. also likes to sprint the last several blocks (or miles) of our run. She also does things like run faster up hills. She seems to enjoy running into the wind. I do not like to do these things. We are obviously very different types of runners.

But I do like running with E. We get each other out the door. And so I feel that I must get faster. Which means, speedwork.

I don't really know that much about speedwork. From what I've read on blogs here and there, quite a few folks run speedwork intervals at tracks for 400 or 800 meters. And they are supposed to help you get faster. And then there are these things called fartleks. There, I've exhausted my knowledge.

Well, there aren't any tracks near me, at least that I know about. I also have absolutely no idea how fast I should try to run a given interval. I'm quite the slow poke, generally running 12:30-13:00 minute miles still. So I should be shooting for what? In the past I've tried the sprinting from light pole to light pole a few times. That was ok, but it seemed kind of random.

So, what to do?

The past couple weeks, I've been playing a bit with www.mapmyrun.com and the Cool Running pace calculator, looking at different road distances near me and trying to figure out how long it would take me to run a given distance, assuming a 11:30 minute mile. In doing this, I discovered that some of the paths at a nearby park give some nice, even, short distances.

And so Theresa's speedwork plan was born!

In The Meadows, there are these three paths that make a triangle loop and together add up to 0.5 miles (Jawbone Walk, Middle Meadow Walk, and the path along the road between them). Jawbone Walk is 0.2 miles, which makes the other two sides together 0.3 miles! (Yay, for basic math skills! Although I still measured all the sides on www.mapmyrun.com, because I am a dork.)

So my plan is this: To run speedwork intervals first using the 0.2 mile Jawbone Walk segment as the bit that I sprint, with the remaining 0.3 for recovery. Then move up to using the 0.3 segment for sprints, and eventually moving up to using the whole 0.5 miles for sprint intervals. Simple, right?

Tonight was my trial run. I figured, given the slow poke that I am, shooting to run Jawbone Walk (the 0.2 mile segment) at an 11:30 min/mile pace was reasonable, which meant I would need to run it in 2:18 minutes.

I ran the loop twice, sprinting as fast as I thought I could along Jawbone Walk. Which was not pleasant. My stomach started hurting very quickly, and by the end, I had a stitch in my side. My times for the 0.2 mile sprints: 1:54 and 1:49 minutes which work out to around a 9:30 min/mile or faster. What?!?! Ok, I know it's only 0.2 miles, but that's way crazy faster than I thought I could run!

Assuming tonight wasn't a complete fluke, and I didn't miscalculate, I now have a baseline. Still, a 9:30 min/mile pace? Next week, I'm going to try to run the loop four times, with a 10 min/mile pace for the Jawbone Walk sprint segments. That still seems wildly fast for me, but I guess it's possible if it's only 0.2 miles.

Enough about speedwork. Tomorrow, pictures of someplace new that I went today!

Divebombed

What was it with the wee bugs that kept making suicide runs toward my face this evening?! At least one met his end in my eye and another in my mouth. Yuck.

So it was the Horrible Hill Route tonight. And between the divebombing bugs and the GI issues (again), it was definitely on the horrible side. With much walking on the hills. But, slightly faster than last week, so I suppose that's something.

No more broccoli for me for lunch on days that I run in the evening I think.