More miles in the tank...

I continue to stick to the schedule I set myself in a bid to build up to 30 miles a week. Today was, like Wednesday, a day of two sessions and a good opportunity once again to get a hard session in and some miles at the same time.
As planned, the hard session was Hill Reps. There are various good hills for doing hill reps available to me and today I chose to go up Park Hill. Park Hill in Skipton is not far away from School and ideal for Hill Reps; grassy and nice and steep. I decided on short hill reps again rather than longer ones as these seem to benefit me more. This would mean however not running right to the top which feels somewhat stupid considering that's the whole point of fell running! I decided '1 minute up hard followed by 1 minute down jog recovery for 30 minutes' would be just the ticket. So after a 10 minute warm up, I was good to go.
The session as a whole went extremely well. In fact, it was one of the best hill rep sessions I have ever had. My legs felt fresh and strong from the off and my style felt very efficient. The Hill was unsurprisingly muddy and although this made the session even more challenging, I felt to cope pretty well. The 15 reps of 1 minute each gave me the following distances:
1. 178m
2. 165m
3. 167m
4. 163m
5. 162m
6. 160m
7. 160m
8. 163m
9. 157m
10. 160m
11. 158m
12. 158m
13. 150m
14. 150m
15. 153m
The distances recorded are very pleasing and considering I did 15 efforts rather than the standard 12 for this session, I feel this is a big victory for me against Park Hill! The strength work done on Monday certainly felt to come into its own today so this will definitley be done every week from now on.
When I got home I just did a steady 30 minute run on the fields near the house to flush out the legs and put a few more miles in the tank. I felt surprisingly strong and fresh after the morning's efforts! This brings the total distance for the day to around 8 miles and for the week, between 25 and 30.
On Tuesday I am going up to Sedbergh for the annual Sedbergh 3 peaks (3 mile/1450') which is a superb race taking in the summits of Winder, Arant Haw and Crook. I have done it for the past two years and I hope to improve on last year's 19th place. I am however having to rework the schedule to take account of the races coming up so it now looks like:
Sunday 28th Feb: Intervals
Monday 1st March: Strength Work
Tuesday 2nd March: Sedbergh 3 Peaks
Wednesday 3rd March: Long recovery run
Thursday 4th March: Fartlek
Friday 5th March: Rest
Saturday 6th March: Northern Schools Cross Country Championships
A day off tomorrow before a tough few days in the build up to Northern Schools. Tomorrow sees Town take on Leeds (the scum of the earth - absolutley hate them!) so I am really hoping we give them a good stuffing. Will be back to report on Sunday!