Eight is more than enough.

Moving into winter has its advantages.

One of them isn't running a hill session at Royal Park. For one thing, it's dark and you tend to trip over dead branches. For another thing, the pathway we use is getting old and cracking up, making it hazardous.

Last night it had also been raining, and there's nothing worse than doing stretches on cold, wet ground.

On the bright side, it wasn't cold, in fact I probably overdressed, expecting it to be colder.

I jumped off the tram from work at Royal Park station, drove to the University, changed in the car, ran in to pick up any stragglers, found Theo and Andrew and jogged with them back to Royal Park, about a mile.

The group was halfway through its warmup routine and soon we were steaming and ready to start. It's a great group, with runners of all abilities from really fast to really slow and everyone encourages each other.

The course is a 550 metre pathway starting at Flemington Road by the tennis court and ending where it crosses the West Coburg tramline which snakes through the park. (The course can be seen as the top lateral of the triangular shape appearing above the Figure 8 in the map.) It is a gradual rise to begin with the gradient increasing 150 metres from the end.

The session was eight of these, jogging back down after each. This is a regular training session, once every month or so, but the most repeats I had done for probably a few years was six, so this was going to be testing.

I completed the eight by running more conservatively than I have done in the past and then blasting the last one in about 1:43.

Jogged back to the University track then home for dinner.