Category Archives: Intervals

Hilly intervals

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#10 – 50 runs in 100 days summer edition
#71- 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

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Tonite I had the pleasure of doing hilly intervals with some other Coach K Runners – Emil and Marina.

First we did FKT on St Hans (Fastest Known Time). Coach K Runners have a route that we run on and register our times. Horrible experience. I was very fast down and then a bit slower up but had blood taste in my mouth when I finished. My first time is 3.13 min. What we will do later is to run this again and hopefully improve our times. I was surprised by myself, thought that I would be slower since I had a longer trail run this weekend.

After we had recovered it was time to do the hilly intervals.

My pulse belt didn’t want to be with me tonite so we couldn’t do pulse based hilly intervals

Set 1: Long hill, middle hill, short hill and sledding hill

Set 2: Long hill with Mats’s “mördar” variant, middle hill, short hill and sledding hill

It was tough tonite, it is so much better to do hilly intervals with people who are faster than you, then you presses yourself in another way so we felt we were done after 2 sets.

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FKT: 3.13 min

Total distance: 4.85 miles (7.81K: 1.99K transport to St Hans, 3.74K hilly intervals, 2.08K transport home)
Hilly intervals: Distance: 2.32 miles (3.74K), time: 44.35 min, average pace: 11.55 min/k, max pace: 3.06 min/k
Cadence on my way home was 178 :-)

Hilly intervals

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#4 – 50 runs in 100 days summer edition
#65- 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

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This afternoon I ran up to St Hans hills to do hilly intervals.

To be honest I do not like intervals because you give 100% and are exhausted when the interval is done but I also know that intervals will make me faster so it is definately necessary for my next challenges this Fall.

Not the best day to to this, the temperature was 27oC (81F) so I brought my energy belt with me with 2 bottles with water. Was not sure which running shoes I would use but decided at the end to run in my Altra Lone Peak 1.5 that is my new trail running shoe.

I decided I would do 4 hills x 3

Set 1: Long hill, middle hill, short hill and sledding hill

Set 2: Long hill with Mats’s “mördar” variant, middle hill, short hill and sledding hill

Set 3:  Long hill, middle hill, short hill and sledding hill

I would test another type of interval training, rest between each interval in each set would be based on pulse. When I got down to pulse 135 I would start the next interval.

So of course my pulse belt did not to be with me today.

So I started with warmup running around the top hill doing kick butt with feet, high knees and Indian jump and then I ran down to the first hill which is the worst one. It starts flat and get steeper and steeper and then the heat on top of that. Have I told you that I, running and heat, we are not friends?

At the top of each hill I drank some water and then ran down to the next starting point for the next interval. Decided to rest for 1 min and then ran up the middle hill. After that it was the short hill and rested for 30s and then the sledding hill and rested also for 30 s.

After each set I took a flat run around the circle hill back to the strating point of the long hill.

It was time for set 2, the long hill with the “mördar” variant is brutal. Good with water is that you also can wet your hair and face when the heat hit you.

When I was on my way down to the short hill on set 3 the pulse belt had decided to be with me :-) so now it was time to test the rest down to 135 before I ran each interval.

You still need to be a bit breathless between each interval and 135 seems to work for me. You decide what pulse you want to get down to.

After the last interval on set 3 the pulse belt had enough :-)

It was nice running fast again, I have avoided any type of intervals or physical traning during spring due to my glutues problem that I needed to take care of before I started to run fast again. I will see if my knee will complain tomorrow or not.

The results from the interval training

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The altitude during interval training

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Interval training

Distance: 4.64 miles (7.47K), time: 1.01.45.8 h, average pace: 8.15 min/k, max pace: 3.47 min/k,
VO2 Max: 32 ml/kg/min, cadence: 170

Running Technique

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#3 – 50 runs in 100 days spring edition
#37 – 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

This afternoon Coach K Runners had the privilege to have a running technique session with “Krutgubben”.

The temperature was around 7oC (45F) and grey so I decided to wear winter pants, orange long sleeve, fleece and green windstopper, since it was “Rock Your Socks Day” I decided to have one of my pink compression socks and one black sock for this occasion. And of course gloves and hat.

I was a bit late because I got stuck at something so I hoped that I would get there on time. When I got to St Hans Hills I saw a familiar face and knew that I was not too late anyway :-)

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Distance: 1.99K, time: 12.23 8 min ,
average pace: max pace: 5.33 min/k,
VO2 Max: 28ml/kg/min

Some Coach K Runners were already there, some familiar faces and some that I had not seen before. Åke asked me if I had a jump rope, he had some old rope that would work just fine but I told him that I did not have one but Krutgubben had a bunch. We would later found out what we would use them for :-)  First we were running to the  first place where we would do some running techniques, time would tell 😉 you never know with Krutgubben.

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We started with warmup

The first exercise, after the warmup,  was that we would get together two and two that had the same pace, the natural choice for me was Eva Berg and waved at her.

And then  the first group (included me) would start with running with jump rope,  if we did wrong the jump rope would get in the way, which was a challenge, I Think that I was doing OK, something between running and jumping :-) and the second group would do:

Freezejumps
Stepup side
180 degree jumps

and then we swithed, There were some hip exercises, that I will start doing at the gym, to strengthen my hip muscles.

and then we swithed, There were some hip exercises that I think that I would continue with to strengthen my hip muscles.

Today we did the following exercises:

Jumping jack special
“Kick Ass”
High knees
High knees with high frequency
Indian Jumps
Indian jumps with long arms
Indian jumps with short arms
Hedge Walking without hurdles

After the warmup it was time for intervals. To prepare the body for the intervals, we were warming up by two and two running forward. The first person turned off at certain point and ran back, and then caught up with the second person that just continued.

Today’s intervals was Krutgubbens favorite where you would really pour on and thus enable the twitch muscle fibers.
Today we were working 2 and 2. One of us rested. The first person ran 300m and ran back and the second person did the same thing, then the first person ran 200m and ran back and the seond person did the same thing  and then the first person ended with 100m and the second person did the same thing . This set was done 5 times / team

During the intervals I was feeling that my right gluteus got upset and was not sure this was a smart thing for me to do.

Ended with 50 cracy jumps

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Then it was time to head home. I walked with Eva to her home and then I started to run but felt that my right gluteus has had enough and started to walk.

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Total distance: 4.64 miles (7.47K) running, 0.75 miles (1.2K) walking

#27 – 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

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I am not a treadmill lover but sometimes the treadmill is a life saver, like today when the weather is rainy, windy, cold and grey. I do not like to run in the rain.

So I have a pulse watch which warns me about storms and it made noise this morning and when I biked to the gym I had some heavy upwind part of the way so the watch was right :-)

I was suppose to have hilly running this morning with a CKR friend but she ran into a cold last night so it was cancelled. Plan A was not to run on the treadmill then but since I have set a goal now to hit at least 10000 kcal before March 1 (participating in “Kalorijakten”) I decided I would run on the treadmill also and when the hilly running was cancelled I decided I would do interval training on the treamill instead of only running 2-3K.

Last week I did Krutgubbens (The powder man’s intervals) intervals, since it was the first time and I did not know how I would respond to this type of interval training my fastest pace was 5 min/k but felt that I probabaly could run faster than that I modified my interval paces to the following:

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I have noticed that at 5.10 I start to feel a bit more breathless and have to fight with myself, not that I am going to quit or anything but it is getting down to the area where I am not really at. At 5.00 it was even tougher and today I would go beyond 5 min/k and I was a bit scared even if it would be for only 2 minutes and 1 minute but 2 minutes is quite long but I did it. It was such a joy to do the last 2 intervals even if I had to pep myself that it is not long time left til you will have 1 min rest. That minute rest is a relief for a short moment :-)

I am going to stay with these intervals for a while now. It feels good to have a security string that I use to be on the safe side.

So distance: 5.18 miles (8.34K), time: 50.03.30 min,
average pace: 6 min/k, max pace: 3.53 min/k, VO2 Max: 31 ml/kg/min

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After that it was biceps, triceps, legs and ended with core: circles, side plank and then 5 min and 15 s regular plank :-)

#25 – 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

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This morning it was time for hilly intervals with Coach K Runners. Before I woke up I heard the rain :-)

After breakfast I saw that the rain had not stopped and was hoping that it would end before those hilly intervals. I do not like to run in the rain :-)

I got ready to run up to St Hans hills. We were suppose to be 18 people and 7 dropped out because of the bad weather.

We started with warm up and ran to the long hill to get ready for the first interval. I always run fast in the beginning but slower at the end. It would be nice one day to be able to keep the speed.

And then we had an interval where we started at top of the top hill, ran down to the middle hill and when the first person touched the dirt road behind the middle hill, we were turning around and ran up to the top hill again. Of course Jimmy “the gazelle” was the fastest down the hill. I do not understand where he gets his energy from. We did this interval a couple of times.

Then we did a new type of interval where we started from the top of the top hill, ran down the downhill hill, back up the downhill hill and up to the top hill again. This time I was coming down the downhill almost first but Jimmy “the Gazelle” passed me at the end :-) then it goes slower up and the hills again where I was passed by the fastests hilly runners. We were told that if we want we are going to take the time and then later this spring time us again to see if there is any improvements. I need to remember to bring my stopwatch with me next time.

After that we did intervals on the “circle hill” where we run down in the middle, turned right and ran up the steeper right side, down in the middle, turned to the left and ran up the steeper left part and did this til Mats felt it was enough, it was 4 or 5 times.

And then finally it was time for Mats’s brutal variant of the longest hill. I am running a hilly race called St Hans Extreme, last year they had to make some adjustments to the route because the municipality was performing drainage work on the slopes so at the amphitheater which had been my worst hill was changed and became much more brutal. So you run up that part, down to a flatter part and then up the top hill. I just made up my mind that I am going to it all which I did and was one of the first people up that hill.

Last it was the same interval when we ran down the top hill to the start of the middle hill and when the first person got to the dirt road we turned back and run to the top hill again.

It was wet, gooey and rainy today but a very good workout :-)

Total distance: 6.04 miles (9.73K), time: 1.13 h

Average speed (to St Hans Hills): 6.40 min/k, max speed (to St Hans Hills): 6.10 min/k

Average speed (hilly intervals): 9.36 min/k, max speed (hilly intervals): 3.28 min/k, VO2 Max: 31 ml/kg/min

Average speed (to Eva): 8.59 min/k (stopped to compare the bottom of our trail shoes), max speed (to Eva): 5.57 min/k

Average speed (from Eva back home): 5.54 min/k :-) , max speed (from Eva back home): 5.53 min/k :-)

Thanks Eva and Niklas for the good fika after those hilly intervals. I did not want to to get their home dirty so I took off my socks. It was very nice afterwards to put those wet socks on again to run back home. I do not know where I got my energy from, a fast run back to my home.

 

Results from the hilly intervals

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Altitude at the hilly intervals

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