Shock and Awe... I'm doing it wrong

I may have mentioned in the past that my clinic leader, Bing calls his clinic, "Shock and Awe" and while there have been various examples of this over the past weeks, this week really showed me the true meaning behind it.

On Wednesday we did 7 hills.

For the last four, we added about 45 sec - 1 min of VO2 Max training, at the top of the hill.

We are supposed to run the hills at T-pace, of course I always never hit mine, but I do my best. Then, at the end of the hill, we were to keep running at Ipace (45 seconds or so faster than Tpace). Here are my average paces:

Hill 1 (no VO2): 6:47/km
Hill 2 (no VO2): 6:52/km
Hill 3 (no VO2): 7:07/km
Hill 4 (w/ VO2): 7:15/km
Hill 5 (w/ VO2): 7:30/km (and Bing paced me!)
Hill 6 (w/ VO2): 7:41/km
Hill 7 (w/ VO2): 7:32/km (yes, I pushed here)

My Tpace is 6:00/km and thus my Ipace is 5:15/km

Shock and Awe - I'm doin it wrong.

Crazy or just a typical runner?

Yesterday the GTA was hit with our typical spring snow fall. Well, typical in that the snow fell, a-typical in that 11+ centimetres fell over the course of 12 hours.

So, our planned hills were cancelled and in fact our group leader suggested via email that we run them on a treadmill if possible.

So, I did.

After supper with the family (a lovely unrushed affair because I wasn't on a timeline) and nursing the baby to sleep (GAH! The baby is almost 7.5 months!), I headed out to the gym at the grocery store and got on the treadmill.

I had a tiny post-it note with cheat times and mileage on it so that I knew when to ramp up the hills and speed etc and off I went. The gym was empty, TLC taught me all about Sister Wives and Charlie Sheen and after figuring out that I needed to actually hold on to my cheat sheet (it fell twice), I was in a huge zone.

5 hills plus warm up and cool down took me an hour and 8.4km.

Did you know that treadmills go into cool down mode after an hour?

Neither did I.

I felt so good after getting the hills done even though while I was running them, I was cursing the 1/4 miles.

So, does this make me crazy or just a typical runner?