Hill Run

Today I was responsible for the girl’s training again. It’s fun to do. Romana had a running training planned for them, but gave me explicit instructions to do “something else”, to spice up the training a bit.

No problem.

I asked them if they would like to row in the front, and promised them an “unforgettable” training.

The session is not so hard, but the anticipation makes it epic. There is certainly a quite strong mental edge to this run. Luckily, it is in very beautiful nature.

From the rowing club you run 1km, with some warming up exercises. Then some stretching. And then you run up the hill to Rozdrojovice. It’s about 1.5km but the average grade is more than 10%, with sections that are above 20%. For the girls, who didn’t know this route, it may have seemed endless, but they battled their way to the top.

On the top, we turned left, on a dirt path that drops back to the lake again. Some places are quite steep. We basically ran fartlek, slowly first to get the heart rate down, then slow and fast as the terrain allowed.

sovistudanka.jpg

You pass places with a certain “genius loci”, like this owl spring with nice fresh water, which was a good stop on the way back up. On the way down the girls were moaning constantly. “Ooooh, we have to run up this hill.”

At the lake, we turned around and did the hill in intervals. We would run for 2-3 minutes, then walk until the girls heart rates had dropped back to 150 bpm. It’s amazing how they go above 200 bpm easily.

I felt a bit like a slave driver, but I think the uphill part was less intense than the girls feared. The water from the spring tasted wonderfully fresh.

All the time the sun was shining, birds were singing,  dogs were barking. In summary, a very nice run.

https://www.strava.com/activities/487036643

This is what we did:
prehradafartlek

This is how the girls talked about it afterwards:

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They were proud they did it and perhaps we will do it again. It’s a nice session and I do believe it helps you row faster.