I originally posted this on the Runner’s World Blog site – the Loop. But since I seem to be ignored on the Loop, I decided to share it with people who’ll actually read it. That’s right. You win!

This morning (while watching it snow outside, hard – yes, snow), I did my first hill workout since January. I did it on the treadmill so that if it went really badly I could just switch over to a speed workout. That, and it’s snowing and I didn’t really want to do hills in the snow on April 29.

I’m starting to gear up for the Ragnar Wasatch Back relay, which is hill intensive, so I need to tell my team how much they can expect from me. Piriformis syndrome is really irritated by hills, and I had no idea where I was.

After a 10 minute warm-up, I did two minute intervals of 1%, back to .5%, 2%, back to .5%, 3%, etc. up to 5%, where I decided that was enough for my hill test. This is the same workout that actually set the piriformis off in January, except at that point I went up to 7% and was running about 45 seconds / mile faster. And since my butt didn’t feel 100%, I did switch over to do just a little bit of speedwork while finishing my 40 minute run.

And I admit, my hip/butt felt pretty tight toward the end of my run, so I stretched extra-long today. I’ll probably stretch a couple more times throughout the day just to make sure my butt loosens up properly. I’m pretty sad that the hills didn’t feel great, but at least I could do them, right? I think I have to tell my team that I can probably do one moderate hill run, but can’t do any of the really big or steep hills. I’ll have to do a downhill test in the next week or two.

Hopefully it just stops snowing by June 18th