Hill intervals again.

     I over slept this morning and didn't have time to drive to the track and since there's not a flat section of road longer than 10 meters up here I made do with hill intervals today. My energy was through the roof and everything was firing.
Wu) Home before leaving- TRX pikes, sandbag (40 pound) swings (like kettle bell swings), sandbag torso rotations, sandbag overhead swings, jump rope. Jog to the soccer field- drills, brief plyo, stretching, then 4 diagonals.
     I measured out a 150 meter hill that starts steep and gradually lessens. The first 50 meters is ~4-5% and the last 50 is ~1-2%. The goal today was 3 X 150 mimicking the first, middle, and last phases of the 400, which means sprint the first 50, "float" or relax without losing much speed on the middle 50, then drive and dig (run ugly) on the last 50. With the last 50 being the lowest grade I was able to speed up on the last 50 which felt like a great training effect although I've never read anything regarding this. Although this is pretty much impossible to do in a 400 race, even this guy can't do it, the increased leg turn over has to have a positive CNS benefit. The decreasing grade allowed me to run stronger and hold form. If the hill were 5% the entire time I would have fallen apart a little more. The altitude (8200ft) in this case inhibited recovery more than anything. Physiologically these are too short to be affected by lower oxygen uptake during the interval, but for the 5:00 rest intervals recovery was certainly blunted. I think it would have taken closer to ~15:00 of recovery to run these at a truly high quality effort.  
     And just to add a little gasoline to the fire, I decided to put on my 20# weight vest on the final 150. Felt great on the first 50 and by the final 50 I was feeling like I was finishing a 400 race. Intense muscular fatigue just a few meters shy of starting to fail. Vision started to tunnel a little after I stopped.
     Then jogged back to the soccer field and did a brief drill set then 4 X 40 meters sprint to max speed. Jogged home.