12/16-17/14. tues, wed. 50 min easy pace, 3x600m hill repeats

tuesday.  up at 0440, out the door by 0453.  plan called for a 45-60 min easy pace run.  i ran for approx 25 minutes, turned around and looped back.  50:50 elapsed, roughly 8:41 min/mile moving pace, very comparable to last week's easy pace.  5.85 miles total.  it was pretty warm, and i felt pretty good.  I actually saw a lot of people out (relatively).  2 runners, 1 walker, 1 run/walker.  i usuallly have the sidewalks completely to myself.   when i was going to come up on someone and pass them, i tried to announce myself and give them some warning, rather than just  sneak up on them and startle them.  Just a day to put in some miles.

wed.  had a little trouble getting out of bed.  alarm at 0440, in bed until 0450, still out the door just after 0500.  plan was for hill repeats.  3x600m.  i didn't have a specific hill/distance mapped out, but i knew 600m is approx .40 miles.  So i picked the steepest downhill i could find from my house, with some length.  the hill i used to use for my 400m repeats is awesome, but levels off after that 400m.  so i ran to oldtown at the bottom of the hill (approx a mile from my door).  turned around, ran up it until the GPS watch said i covered .40 miles,  ran back down, and repeated.  but on the third climb, i just kept on going back up the hill towards home.  this run truly sucked.  worst. 5k. ever.  approx 500ft of elevation gain over the 3.15 miles. that hill from oldtown mukilteo up towards my neighborhood (lincoln ave) just sucks for an uphill run.  I guess I will keep this route for my hill climbs. I also contemplated just running up/down the hill from the ferry dock (muk speedway) but it just doesn't seem steep enough.  i wore my heart rate monitor.  I like to check out the heart rate data during intervals and hill repeats. my recovery seems to be impacted by the number of repeats.  the more repeats, my HR cannot return to the baseline.  this trend gets worse as intervals/repeats add up.  I think the ability to fully recover is a good measure of cardiovascular health.  it looks like i need some work..