More and more hills

Early start yesterday morning to catch a ride with Will up to jells park for the hill session. Jogged to the hill for a warm up before listening to Trevor tell everyone to take the recovery's easy, but you can guess what happened from then.

Loads of people there but I started strong and stayed with the leaders on the first one but they raced the recovery. I'm probably just jealous to be honest that I can't keep up. Decided that next session I'm going to run it like them and see how long I can hold on for.

Times went : 1:08, 1:09, 1:12, 1:12, 1:10, 1:12, 1:10, 1:12.

Recovery average was probably around 1:52. Pretty consistent which I'm stoked with but good to be running hills again. Started doing some exercises the physio gave me for glute strength and injury prevention. I can do about 25 calf raises on each leg but Stacy reckons I should be doing well over 30  in order to maintain form over longer races. Some of the glute work is harder than I thought it would be which shows that my legs aren't the strongest.

Went down to Ferny creek this morning for the long run and what a relief it was to be back running in the forest. The air is genuinely so much fresher. Pretty chilly so the hands got a bit numb so I'll bring some gloves next time. Started off Jb, Sam, Beau, other Jack, Simon, some other sporty devils and I. Started off mainly downhill which wasn't a good sign before we hit the first hill.

I hung onto Sam and other Jack and kept the pace steady, continued onto a flat section before ascending for much longer this time up to Grants picnic ground. About 7k in at this point we stopped for a toilet break. Beau, Jb, Simon and other devils went back to the starting point from here to make sure they didn't miss the Rob Clarke memoir ceremony. We continued on as Sam reckoned we could pump out some more k's and still get back. I was game so we took a side loop up another hill where I was doubting how long I could last. Pretty sore now but after another hill we hit a steady downhill slope during which I got my breath back and eased into it.

Back pass Grants, and then onto the road before cutting through the forest onto another road hill. Struggled here because of the belly beginning to hurt, before hitting another hill back up to our car park. They dropped me, but as they edged away I thought I still had stuff left and closed the gap considerably up the hill. Only had about 10m on me in the end which was great to see. Next time I'll definitely be with them the whole way.

Ran it back up to Trevor giving his speech about Ron Clarke before a few other ex Olympians added in as well. It was next to the place where a famous photo of Ron was taken. He wrote a book which I'll try and read called "The Unforgiving Minute" about his athletics career.

I ran with Sam back up to our car park to hit 1:30:35 all up during which we completed 19.5km bringing up 71.4 for the week. Longest for a while after a spell of only hitting around 60 and I'm feeling pretty tired but good. All the hills this weekend have got me pretty tired, but feeling great as you always do after a ferny session.

Albert Park 10km road race next weekend so should be a quick one.