Kenyan Hills

Week 1, Session 3 - 2 x 5 mins Kenyan Hills (4.5 miles)

Today is my final rest day of the week and I definitely need it judging by how tired my legs felt whilst cycling too and from work today.  I think yesterday's Kenyan Hills session took it's toll, despite it being a fairly short session.

I was really looking forward to this session, because after much research, I found that I had been running these sessions incorrectly when I've been training for other races.  Previously (using todays workout as an example), I would've found a long hill of a decent gradient and run up it for 5 minutes at a steady pace followed by a recovery jog back down again and then I would repeat the previous steps.  I began to think I was doing these workouts incorrectly when I saw that later in my marathon training program I have a 2 x 12 mins session, which would mean I have to try and find a hill well over a mile long.  After reading many conflicting descriptions on various forum threads of how a Kenyan Hills session should be run, I came accross some video clips on the Full Potential Run Club website that show exactly how to do it . . . and it makes much more sense now.

So, putting my new found knowledge into action yesterday I warmed up with a 1.3 mile easy paced run to the bottom of my hill (ideally 6-8% gradient), I then ran up it at threshold pace for 1 minute and back down to where I started, also at threshold pace, and these steps are repeated for 5 minutes.  I then had a recovery jog for 2 minutes before repeating the 5 minute session again.  A cool down run for 1.3 miles finished the session.

I ran the session pretty well maintaining my target threshold pace for the first rep, but I was 10 seconds off the pace for the second rep.  This wasn't too bad considering it was only my second hills session since August.

Tomorrow I have a 3.5 mile recovery run to look forward to, followed by a 8-9 miler on Sunday.