OUCH!

Yep, eating all that chili on Friday's cook off was a bad idea, at least as far as the running went. My 12 mile run turned into a 5.5 mile walk on my hill route!

Fortunately, not all was lost.

First, the stats. The walk took 1:32:45, which is 31:23 slower than my fastest run time.

Howver, I learned several things, which made this walk instructive.

I started at a nice leisurely pace, but picked up dramatically at the 1.5 mile mark. I specifically wanted to time myself walking up the hill, and what I learned was a real eye opener! The hill is about .95 miles, and my best time running up the hill is around 12 minutes. My very focused walk, however, took 15:06. In other words, I walked the hill only 3 minutes slower than I ran it. The Novartis 10 K earlier in the year went up that same hill. And, some people did a jog-walk up the hill and ended up doing better that I did by jogging the whole way.

So, what does this mean? Normally, I save 5 to 6 minutes per mile, or more, by jogging as opposed to walking. On this hill, I saved only 3. And, I felt much stronger after the hill this time than I did while running. The bottom line is that, from a timing perspective, I should probably jog-walk big hills. I'll work that out a bit in practice the next few days.