"It's a hill. Get over it."

When I first started running, hills scared me and I assiduously avoided them. Running on the flat was knackering enough, I thought, without attempting to defy gravity by running uphill. Eventually, however, I noticed that actually the dreaded hills couldn’t be ignored forever, and began to cautiously venture in an upward direction from time to time. The first (not large, not long) hill I tackled left me with an entirely new set of aches and pains the following day, but I’m gradually getting more used to them, even though every time I find myself near the bottom of a hill contemplating the hellish distance to the top, I remember afresh how much I absolutely hate running uphill. Needless to say, my speed also drops considerably on these occasions.

The reason I mention it is because this Saturday, I’m entered for the Balmoral 10k which includes a famous Killer Hill. Looking at the elevation profile on MapMyRun, it’s flattish for the first 1.5 miles, slightly uphill for half a mile, then steeply uphill from 2 to 2.5 miles. After that, it’s pretty much all downhill. Some comments from Runners’ World users: "Came to the hill, and it was HUGE!". "The hill is incredibly tough." "Unless you are a very experienced runner, nothing prepares you for the hill." And my particular favourite – "I will conquer that hill! Then I'll retire."

Hence, I’m not hoping for a particularly great time, given the reputed killerness of this hill and the extreme slowness of my hill running, even supposing I manage to run the damn thing at all, which seems distinctly unlikely, but hey, it’ll be a challenge.

This week’s running… had a few niggles in my left knee following a 10k run (in under 59 minutes!) on Tuesday, but it seems to have settled down. Rested on Wednesday and did a very, very easy three miles on Thursday and a slightly hilly 2.5 on Saturday. Sunday was an 8 - well, 8.09 to be precise, which I managed in 01:20:55, so pretty much exactly 10 minute miles, though splits tell a slightly different story, ranging from 09:37 to 11:08 (the first mile, and including A HILL).

Oh, I also remembered to use my heart rate monitor for this run. It isn’t helping much, though, as I haven’t yet really figured out what my maximum heart rate should be or what percentage of it I should be running at. My next project, maybe. But anyway, for the record, my average HR was 153bpm with a maximum of 164bpm.