Terri Rejimbal (of Precise Digital) was the first woman to cross the finish line last year at the Skyway 10k. Here’s what it was like:
“It was really exciting actually because I really hadn’t planned on being the first woman, but my competitive nature comes in and I was like, you know what? I think I’m gonna try it!” she said.
Rejimbal didn’t just try it, she was crowned Queen of the Hill. That means she ran the fastest on the incline.
“I went out, I wanted to keep a pace and I thought, I can dig a little bit harder, cause I had been training on hills, so I thought, well, I’ll just see what I got,” Rejimbal said.
Training on hills is what she says is key to getting up that 4 percent grade of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. So we ran the hills of the Courtney Campbell Causeway pedestrian bridge.
She gave us some tips on how to get up the incline.
“First, when you got up that incline, what your pace and your perceived effort, you want to keep that on the incline. Don’t slow down. You will slow down, but you want to keep the same rhythm leading up to that,” she said.
Rejimbal says at least once a week in your training, run hard up some hills then walk or jog down.
What about sprinting down the incline?
“If you can handle it without going out of control,” she said. “Use some of the gravity to your advantage when going down. Make sure you don’t lean back so where your heels are landing and you feel like you’re breaking or jarring.”
You’ve heard “running is 90 percent mental and the rest is physical?”
Rejimbal also uses a saying from the “Hamilton” soundtrack to stay motivated.
“I’m not going to throw away my shot. That’s my thing,” she said. “It’s that you’ve trained all this for it, don’t just give it away, don’t just go, oh I’m going to scale back a little bit. Really charge up that hill, see what you’ve got, you may really surprise yourself.”
You can read the news article and video of her at:Channel 10 News
