Day 388: Conquering the "Unbreakable Hill Climbs" WOD

Though I only slept for a total of 6.5 hours last night, it was restful sleep and I woke up feeling refreshed.

My body was sore after yesterday’s workout, as I expected it would be, which made me happy. If I had more time I would have pushed myself even more to see how far I could have actually gone. 

Don’t get me wrong, I was completely wiped out, but I could have gutted out more even if it were additional burpees, bodyweight squats or some other exercise. 

After the craziness of yesterday it was nice to have a day that, while still busy with meetings, was edging back towards normal - whatever “normal” means in my work week. 

Today’s Spartan WOD called for interval hill running with progressively steeper grades. It dictated running 5-10 minutes with increasing the grade every minute on the minute. 

I chose to make it harder by wearing my GORUCK pack with the 20 lb ruck plate and adding a 1% incline to each set. So, my workout looked like this: 

Warm-up

  • Dynamic warm up
  • Cycle - 5 minutes

Main set

  • Run 5 minutes on a progressively steeper grade. Every minute, increase the grade, starting at 1% and gaining to 5%.
  • Walk 3 minutes to recover at previous lowest grade (e.g. end of first set was 1%).
  • Repeat hill interval 2 more times with each time starting from the next grade (e.g. 2nd set started at 2%) for a total of 3 sets, totaling 24 minutes of climbing time.

Cool Down

  • Stretch

The workout crushed me, leaving me dripping in sweat - just what I want from a hard workout.

Tonight I spent some time searching for a December race. I want to have a race on my calendar every month, if possible, so that I’m constantly training for another race.

With the Spartan Super next June I will have to work my way up to half-marathon distances, something which I have never done. 

The most I have ever run is 4-5 miles so I’m going to shoot for a 10k in December and then we’ll see what I can schedule into the beginning of next year to help me train.

I also plan on acquiring more training gear for home to specifically help me train for my Spartan races (e.g. bucket filled w/rocks, sandbags, etc).

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