Karen writes: my first 'hill repeats'

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I managed 6 of the hill repeats last night before I got bored and came home.   I mostly followed the instruction to warm up and warm down, then pushed my pace up the 250 meter hill (10m elevation), taking it easier on the way down with my huffing and puffing gone by the time I was halfway back to start.  Be interesting to see if that gets any easier with being repeated and next time I will remember to dig out the heart monitor to see what the exertion is doing to the heart rate.    It feels really strange to only go out to do what seems like such a small amount of work, I felt like I should be off clocking up kilometer after kilometer...but this is quality rather than quantity time now.    This morning I felt quite happy though,  I looked online at the elevations for the Perth Marathon and saw that the worst hill is at about halfway through and rises approximately 60 meters over the distance of 3km.  In the Rotorua Marathon the nastiest hill (which wasn't that bad really) rose by around 40 meters in under a kilometer, those sorts of comparisons make this new 'hill repeat' thing seem worthwhile, and of course the hills in the upcoming event appear a lot less of a worry.

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