The Little Things
March 15, 2016

While my seven milers tend to be some of my favorites of my training cycles, my eight milers tend to not be so great (see: Eight Mile Kryptonite). So, Saturday morning when I woke up, I wasn’t very excited about my run. I dragged my feet a bit, but finally got out around 7:30.

The first mile usually feels rough to me. I feel achy and stiff and I don’t feel like I’ve fallen into a good rhythm. The second mile usually feels about the same to me.

On Saturday I decided to go a different route so I could hit a lot more hills than usual, since my half marathon course will have some hills. I don’t typically have hills on the routes I normally run, so this seemed like a good option.

running 8.3 hills

Around mile 3 I started to hit rolling hills, and ended up running on them from miles 3-7.25/7.5 . I used to be really bad at running hills, and now, even though it’s difficult, I definitely feel like I can run them and feel pretty solid (I think Rock’n’Roll St. Louis definitely helped my hill confidence).

I continued to try to run a negative split training run, and felt like I did a pretty solid job of that, even though my second half of the run had far more hills than the first half. Here are my splits:

Not quite a neat and tidy drop each mile, but I definitely picked up the pace as I hit the hills, which felt really good! The temperature was in the low-mid 40’s, but it was pretty humid, so the air felt thick. 8.3 miles complete!

running 8.3 hills

I actually felt really strong throughout the run, and actually had a good time. I’ve been able to push myself a little bit more this training cycle, and I’ve been able to run a solid pace even though my legs are feeling the increase in pace. I’m pretty happy… especially about the hills 🙂

Now it’s your turn to share! What’s the most difficult distance that you run?

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2 responses to “Eight Hilly Miles”

  1. Marsha says:
    March 15, 2016 at 4:31 pm

    Sometimes it’s shorter distances because I feel like I should push myself. Those longer ones I just relax and take it slow and don’t expect too much as far as pace.

    • littlethingscaroline@gmail.com says:
      March 16, 2016 at 9:38 pm

      That’s true. On long runs I settle in totally differently!