It's A Dog's Life

On my way out the door this morning, I asked my dog Kootie (that's him on the left) if he would like to go in my place to run hills. I gave him explicit instructions as to how many reps to do and at what pace to do them at. He yawned, rolled to his side and fell back asleep : ) Oh well. I was just in no mood to do hills today but I sweated out 6 of them, on the treadmill no less, with the steepest incline at 9.5%. The only thing I did different from last time was shorten the climb to 0.25 miles. I kept the recovery to 0.4 miles, which seemed too short given the way I was feeling. I did some light work on my hamstrings and quadriceps afterwards and was able to look down at the pool in between reps and take note of a couple guys who appeared to be strong swimmers. I plan on taking the plunge again tomorrow but am not sure whether to go before or after my scheduled 4 mile run. I've had trouble with leg cramps when swimming after a run, so maybe it makes sense to swim first. Any thoughts?

Artwork: 10-minute sketch of Kootie I did last night

Cardio Vision

This morning called for hills and since I've become such an indoor snob, I figured the best way to get 'em done was on a treadmill. Some of the treadmills at EMH have 12" TV's mounted on them, called Cardio Vision (or something like that). I plugged my headphones into a jack near the main controls, surveyed the full lineup of local cable channels and tuned into the 5AM Sportscenter on ESPN. After a mile warmup I ramped up the elevation to 7% and kept the speed constant at 8.5 (7:06 min/mile) for 0.3 miles. Took 0.4 miles to recover and repeated the process 4 more times, each time bumping the elevation up by 0.5% and ending with a 9% grade hill. I don't especially like hills on a race course but I'm a big fan of training on them. Felt pretty wiped out at the end and had to ease into my planned strength training. I'm thinking next week I'll work in some pool time.