Indoor Hills

Summary Data
Total Time (h:m:s)	50:17	9:58 pace
Moving Time (h:m:s)	50:17	9:58 pace
Distance (mi )	5.04
Moving Speed (mph)	6.0 avg.	9.0 max.
Elevation Gain (ft)	+0/-0
Avg. Heart Rate	155 bpm	187 max

Start Time: 01:25:48 PM

The main workout today was 3 sets of 2 indoor hills at 8% grade. Hills were each 1 minute with two minutes between hills and three minutes between sets (used the Nike+ treadmill training hill workout--except that I used 8% for the entire workout instead of their 2/4/6 grade increase per set). Treadmill speed (as I note below, it is unclear what this means) was 9.0 mph for the first two sets. The last set was at 8.5 and 8.3 and I was hurting. Hit max or near max on each hill and recovered to 160 bpm between hills.

What a long way we have come over the past year. I think I bought the hill workout in March or April and I could not complete it--even with the progressive grade increase. Today I came back to hills and decided just to hit it at 8%. They were hard and I could really feel it in my legs afterwards, but I could also tell that I was moving forward in strength and conditioning. I think the question for next week is whether to stick with 3 sets at a faster pace or whether to do 4 sets at the same pace. I can run faster, so building up the stamina to sustain an 8% at 10.0 is worthy. In terms of muscle building, an additional set would probably do as much as a little bit of speed---and since we are off-season now, I think the speed may be secondary. I will decide this over the weekend I am sure.

Even though I spent some time calibrating the foot pod out on the track in October, I fail to believe that it 'took'. I say this because I find it a little hard to believe that the discrepancy between the calibrated footpod and the treadmill should be more than 1/4 mile over 5 miles. I may end up going back to default---which was also off, but not this wildly. Add to this my frustration with not being able to load data to Motionbased from indoor work and the Garmin is pretty disappointing for all of its power. The sad thing is that Garmin has such a good product that its failure to make a great product is its own---Suunto, Polar and Timex are not expected to have the computing power native to the Garmin---and so it is interesting that they are now serious contenders (and not as bulky)---especially since their footpods are so much nicer.