Two mornings ago, I woke up in a panic. My first thought was that I hadn't been training on hills enough and that I would DNF the 50 miler because of it. I'm not sure what triggered this. I guess I finally realized that the hill work that I've been doing the past couple of weeks has required running up and down relatively short stretches of hills. I live in the flat lands of Princeton, NJ and even the steepest, longest hill I can think of only gives me about 6 mins of running uphill, before I go up and over into a downhill section. Worse, this "long" stretch of hill is on pavement. Hills on runnable trails are non-existent. There are long trail climbs that I can think of, but these are unrunnable because of all of the rocks and roots on the trail.
Fast forward to today. I'm on "vacation" in the Catskills. Unfortunately, work has been consistently bananas for the past few weeks, or maybe the past few years (?) so I can't really ever go on vacation without at least checking and responding to some emails while I'm away. This morning, I found a great trail for a hill workout. It was really steep (8-12% grade vs. 4-5% that I see at home). Not all sections were runnable- still rocky, so I ended up power hiking most of the uphills. The workout was 5 mins power hiking with a 1 minute downhill recovery walk x 5. It definitely felt hard and my heart rate was elevated even with just power hiking. I could feel the lactic acid build up in my quads. The climb was over 2 miles long so it made for a great training hill. I wish I had something like this close to where I live. I would definitely get stronger climbing legs. It was really peaceful out. The trail was right next to a stream and I could see it getting farther and farther away as I climbed up the hill. Woodpeckers surrounded me and I didn't see a single person. I did however scare the crap out of a flock of wild turkeys as I came running down the hill back to my car. They startled me a bit as they all flew up and into the trees at the same time. In total, over 3.5 miles, I climbed about 660 ft. For the 50 miler, I believe the gain is about 100 ft/mile, so this was a tougher workout. I'll need to maintain an average of 15 min/mi for the first 28 miles. Even with today's tough workout, I was able to go under the required 15 min/mi pace so that gave me a tiny boost of confidence.
The road up to the parking lot was rough. There were signs up warning that 4WD was a requirement to get up the road.
The sounds of the stream kept me company as I climbed
I have 3 months to go before the 50 miler and I definitely need to incorporate more hills into my training. So far, I've really been focused on the number of miles, but if I'm going to make the cutoffs at the race, I'm going to need to be quicker on steeper terrain. I think this just means not making it my runs too easy, but finding hills to run or hike on and getting more comfortable with the discomfort of climbing. It's hard to know exactly how technical the trails will be. I'm hoping at least with the steeper sections, it will at least be good footing.
I wonder if I'll ever get to the point where running up hills become "easy"? Probably not. I think it's more likely that I will hate them less and accept the feeling of discomfort that comes with running hills. I will say that there have been moments in the last month or so where I look forward to moving uphill. It's definitely more gentle on the body. I love flying down hills, but I know I'm giving my legs a beating when I do that. Also, it's rare, but in the cases where I get a cramp in my side, it always comes with downhill running.
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