It felt so great this morning to get in a hill workout! I jogged 0.65 miles over to Big Cottonwood Park to meet up with my Salt Lake Running Company friend at 6:30 am. Early Sunday morning runs are perfect, because there is absolutely no traffic to slow you down. We ran through the neighborhoods of Holladay up to the Mount Olympus trailhead (this is essentially my Jerry-Rice hill workout). I was able to accomplish a personal best time of 43:17 for the 5.25-mile ascent (splits: 7:47, 7:26, 7:24, 8:34, 9:28, and 2:37), which made the two minutes of gasping for air and trying to warm my stinging-cold hands up at the trailhead’s gate somewhat enjoyable. I wore my heart rate monitor which registered an average of 159 beats per minute during this climb, thus an excellent workout. The best part about this workout is that the difficult part is all in the first half, so it’s a nice and relaxing run back down to Big Cottonwood Park. On the way back down, I was thinking that running a sub-40:00 for this workout is possible, but only those that are in extraordinary shape would be able to do it. In addition, I ran three cool-down laps around the softball complex before returning to home for a total distance of 1.9 miles.
Finally, for my non-running workout I completed 300 sit-ups, 30 push-ups, a 90-second wall sit, and a 60-second plank. | 