I haven’t done a serious hill workout in a while, but I did tonight. A mile to the hill, dowwwwn about 700m, and then back up. It took me about 5 ish minutes to run down, 6 ish minutes to run up, and I did it 3 times. I worked hard for over an hour, turned beet red, sweated buckets and it felt real good.
In the top third of the third hill I gave myself a pep talk. Yes, I answer when I talk to myself – here’s how it went:
a: I am strong!
b: (pant pant) yeah.
a: I am amazing!
b: (pant pant) yeah.
a: I could do this for hours!
b: hahaha! I guess so, if I had to.
a: But you don’t have to. Hey, you chose to. Look at you choosing to run this hill!
b: (pant pant) uh huh.
a: I am strong! and light!
b: (pant pant) right. Are we there yet?
I gave myself little walk breaks after reaching the top the first two times, but after the 3rd hill I pushed on. For fun I counted my cadence on my right leg for 30 seconds on the flat part of the mile home, like Mark mentioned. For the record, I had a cadence of about 80 steps per minute. Not bad, but I could work on increasing that a bit. Short legs like mine need to go faster to cover more ground!
All Downhill From Here 
I enjoyed your post. And I thought I was the only one that has conversations in my head like that! Sounds like it was a great session!
By: Wobblt man on June 17, 2005
at 6:37 am
i have conservations like this, too. “You can do it!” during the last leg of the race is my favorite. It does help! kirsten
By: kirsten on June 17, 2005
at 1:22 pm