The Hills

Went up to Ferny yesterday with Nick, Haftu and a new guy called Jack who is around 30 and looking to get back into running. Started off slow warming up a bit and eventually hit the hill. I will actually describe it today as it truly is incredible. In all, it is around 1500m long and starts off steep but not too bad, however there is big lumps in the ground every 20m or so for water drainage. This makes it harder as a rhythm is hard to find. That part is surrounded by dense forest which then clears as we get into the middle of the hill. Steep and rocky, this section is about 250m long, however it is only a taster of the pain which follows. By the end of the middle section, you are starting to feel it. Then it flattens out for about 50m before going completely off track up the most difficult section. There is also a small drop about 1 metre high that you have to jump up before continuing up the hill. It is so steep at this point that if it was any steeper, you would have to crawl. It then turns a corner and turns into an quadbike track with rivets and mud everywhere still as steep as before. This is the final push for about 100m before we stop to try to get into oxygen. We did this km in the middle of the hill in 7:50 and its a struggle. I managed to finish it 10m behind Haftu but Nick dropped right off the back about 70m behind. Really sore in the quads after this but finished off the final km's before doing some hill reps on a different less steep hill. It was 270m and we had to sprint the last 100m really hard after going up the first 200 at a reasonable pace. I was done after that, really sore but won on the first 2 so pretty happy with that, 10.5km on the long run in 1:02 and the 3 hills in 1:13, 1:06, 1:04.
Today just did an easy 5km but still quite sore, should've had a rest day. Will do on Wednesday, getting more and more pumped for the school race.