Today I inadvertently introduced some uphill running for the first time. Up until now, I've varied my routes around the river. That means there's a steep hill down and up again to get there, but I build that into my warm up and cool down walks so that's OK, until today I hadn't had to deal with anything other than a few yards of incline during any one run.
But yesterday I got inspired to change things up a little and go the other way along the North Down's Way, running away from the river instead of along it. I've walked that bit of path several times. It's lovely and I walked it a lot in the winter when it was chilly and wet and soggy underfoot. Today, of course, before it rained it was already warm at 7am and dry as a bone. And what I hadn't noticed when I walked the route was how much uphill there was. In fact, most of it is uphill and even though there were some downhill bits they matched with the walking intervals of today's session, all of the running intervals were uphill.
But I still did it, I worked different parts of my legs than usual, but I managed to do it all and now I've completed the fourth week.
Of course, every time you think you've got something, you need to be stretched a bit more, so next week the running intervals all get longer until the dreaded W5D3 (which should be Thursday) which is the first continuous 20 minute run. I hear that it's all about mental approach, but at the moment it sounds just as impossible as the 3-5-3-5 intervals I did today sounded after my first day out.
But I shan't be doing it over this terrain though, I'll be keeping it on the flat!