Hard Hill or Easy Hill?

As Shelly and I headed out for our Wednesday morning hill repeats this week, we turned to each other during the warmup mile and simultaneously asked, "hard hill or easy hill?" We have two hills to choose from on these runs - a steep, short hill and a longer, less steep hill. This is the last week in the first build for Ironman Texas, and I'm exhausted. I'm walking around daily in an Iron Fog, forgetting to hit "send" on text messages and spending more time than usual staring into space trying to remember what I was just about to do. So the answer for me was easy - "EASY HILL!"

We arrived at the hill and started the 1/4 mile repeats - seven of them today. After the first one, Shelly complained that she was already "tingly." I told her I wanted to throw up. After the second one, we stopped talking. And then, somehow, we picked up the pace on each following repeat and crushed the workout. The "easy" hill wasn't that easy after all - we made it hard with speed and effort and determination. As we ran our 2-mile cooldown afterward, we congratulated ourselves on a job well done and confessed that we couldn't understand how it happened.

Throughout the rest of the day, we had another decision to make. "Swim or skip the swim?" I don't think either of us really considered skipping it. But the thought of going to the pool after work made me actually want to cry. We walked out of the office at 5 and agreed to meet at the pool. Then we both got stuck in horrible traffic on the way. Uggg! Delay means we'll be home after 7. Hate that. Should we just skip it? No! We both showed up and whined about it all the way up until sticking our toes in the water, and then guess what happened? We crushed the workout. It was the first time that Coachie had given us actual interval times to go off, and we made them all! So awesome! And at the end of a big build! Woo hoo! An "easy hill."

Today, I nonchalantly grabbed my bike and put it on the trainer, preparing to bang out a 2-hour trainer ride. No big deal, right? I mean, the efforts will be hard, but whatever. Well, the "hard hill" picked me today. I was totally useless on my trainer ride. I couldn't hit my zones, couldn't get anything out of my "efforts" today. Today, just completing the efforts was a victory, and I'll admit that I only did the first set.

Some days you get the hard hill and some days you get the easy hill. But as Coachie once said, there's no such thing as an easy Ironman. ("It's not called Easyman!") So come on hills, bring it. But maybe we can squeeze in a recovery week first.

*The photo at the top is of my running buddy Jenn, from the Reach the Beach Relay in 2008, when Shelly and I were fledgling runners and there really was no such thing as an easy hill.