I usually do hill workouts on my treadmill–it has a pre-programmed hill interval workout that cycles through 4 sets of 4 hills of increasing intensity, with each hill lasting 60 seconds with 60 seconds of recovery at 0% incline in between. But last week, I did hill repeats outside for the first time ever.
I am trying to get my dog back into shape for short runs, and I thought an interval workout would be a good one for her, since we would not be running for long stretches. I figured out how to set my Garmin to beep at different intervals, and programmed a workout with 2 minute “work” intervals and 1 minute “rest” intervals, for 10 intervals cycles total.
We walked for about 1/3 mile and then ran for about 1 mile to the bottom of a long hill in my neighborhood. I started the workout on my Garmin, and we ran up the hill for 2 minutes, then turned around and walked down the hill for 1 minute. I was surprised by how long 2 minutes took and by how much hill we covered in that amount of time. Still, it took three cycles to reach the top of the hill. After that, we ran down the hill until we got to our starting point again, which took about one “rest” interval and one “work” interval. Then we did it all over again.
We still had three sets of intervals left, so we ran down the hill again, and then ran up/walked down two more times. To make up for some of the downhill running time, we ran home, which meant running up another hill.
She did great, although she was confused by all of the u-turns! We covered about 2.5 miles in the 30 minutes of run/walk intervals, and covered about 4 miles total including our warm-up and run home.
My legs told me that it was a good workout–and I think Tiger Lilly thought so too!
Have you ever run hill repeats outside?
Do you run with your dog?
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I miss my canines.
The husband wants to rescue a greyhound. Oddly enough Ive heard they hate to run?
That's right. Even the ones trained to race only do very short distances. I have a friend who has rescued two Greyhounds — they made nice family dogs. 😉
I love the side hanging tongue. She's so cute. I'm sure she was so happy. Love the 'dead dog' act, mine do that too.
Great job on the hills.
I've only done hill repeats outside once- we live in such a flat area, but there is one hill in a park I can use. Most of the time, I count my spinning as hill training as it has strengthened by quads a lot… but I really should add more hills in.
hahaha I like the last picture, I love it when my dog collapses after a run. Mine is just too pokey to take on a real run. When I take him, it's for my last cool-down mile of a 5-6 mile run type thing. I do the majority of my hill training outside. On the treadmill I randomly move the incline up and down just to TRY to prevent boredom…
U turns are good for dogs, otherwise they get so used to what you're doing. Nothing beats seeing a dog passed out after a good run. It makes the run all the better.
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