Hill training

I saw that Tom had put in some hill training this weekend too. The choice of today's run was not so much to emulate him but since we're now in Aurillac for the week, you don't have much choice but to do hills when you run around here.

I wanted to do a long run this morning since tomorrow, I've decided to run this silly race up a hill in Murat. It's only 1.25 km of race but unfortunately there is 220 metres of uphill over the distance. An average incline therefore of around 20%. To get some mileage in today, I convinced Laurence that it would be good to run the 20km around Aurillac. There is a walking route that is well signposted around the town and we decided to run this. The total uphill on the route amounts to something around 250m so this was good hill training for both of us.

We set off at a very steady pace for Laurence, in fact too slow in my judgement, and by 10km we had a heated discussion and Laurence announced that she would run straight back through town. We had done 10 km by this time in just over 1 hour (around 1:01:00) to be precise. I thought that she could go faster and that she was holding it back in reserve at this pace. She didn't agree and so we went our separate ways at this point.

The route back is even hillier than the first half and going up some of these hills was a real struggle. God only knows what it's going to be like tomorrow - read it here for the final verdict ! I managed to finish the whole loop in 1:49:26 so it sook about 48 minutes for the last 10km. As I said: those hills are tough ! Lovely morning here in Aurillac with sunshine but a little breeze so it wasn't too hot. We spotted many of the cycling teams at the hotels around the town as the Tour de France ended the stage yesterday in the town: Lempre, Française des Jeux and Caisse d'Epargne. They were on the way to Figeac for the start of the next stage today.

Laurence had got back 18 minutes before me and welcomed me with a smile. All was forgiven (but not forgotten - will probably hear about this again the next time I annoy her during exercise) and she has decided to run the second half of the loop tomorrow while I accompany her on the bike. I couldn't help thinking that I'll need to do a lot more training like this if I'm ever to finish the Mont Blanc Marathon at twice the distance and over double the climbs.