Monday, December 20, 2010

Max effort hill sprints


A couple of weeks ago I went on a beautiful hike. My friend and I hiked to the top of Bear peak. Along the way I noticed this large hill with a steep trail going towards the summit. My friend and I talked about coming back and running up that steep trail for a workout. Today I set out to do just that. This steep hill is about a half mile from the trail head. So I spent that half mile getting warmed up with shorter sprints and drills. I had on plenty of clothes so my core temperature was up and I was ready to go when I got to the start of the steep trail.
3 x max effort sprints up a steep hill. When I say steep I mean really steep. Like you sometimes have to use your hands to help you along. After a warm up lap I knew I was not going to be able to run to the top of this thing. So I figured I would just go full tilt boogie until I had to stop. That is what I did. 3 full effort sprints until I hit failure. My efforts got me close to the summit but not quite. I would end up in just about the same spot each time. between 1 min 10 secs sprinting and 1 min 14 secs. I wanted to throw up every time. Even though I couldn't run to the top I would still walk or crawl my way to the top. My legs were like Jello after this.
I cooled down for a bit on the walk back to the trail head with some light stretching. As I returned to the trail head I was starting to feel better.
I added a little progression ladder at the trail head. 10 air squats + 1 to 10 of handstand push ups. So 10 squats 1 hspu, 10 squats 2 hspu, 10 squats 3 hspu's and so on until I got to ten. I found a couple of stones to use to help make the handstand push ups elevated. I used a tree for balance. This lasted about 12 minutes. I was totally wrecked after this workout. Ready for food and football.

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