Hills, Hills and more Hills

In preparation for my marathon training (which starts officially on Monday July 4th) I have switched to a five run per week training schedule (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday) and have been maintaining my base fitness with around 30 miles per week.

This last Saturday was an unusually cool morning with low humidity so I decided to go out to Umstead Park and run the "hilly" portion of the City of Oaks Marathon course.

My Garmin Connect activity page shows the map but the most interesting part is the elevation chart that I copied in below:

The Marathon course doesn't include the first and last 3 miles, but I ran those as I needed to park my car somewhere! The hill at mile 4 is nearly a mile long and a steady 150ft incline and will be at mile 20 of the Marathon course. I practiced a new hill climbing technique of short strides at a high cadence (number of strides per minute) and felt like I climbed the hill more efficiently than in the past.

Miles 5 to 9.5 are along "Turkey Creek Trail" which isn't actually part of the Marathon course but runs parallel to a road that is (Ebenezer Church Road). Turkey Creek has a reputation of being hilly and a real challenge and although the couple of miles were mostly relativity easy, once I got to mile 8 I could see where the reputation came from! I was tired by this point and I struggled even with the short quick strides but I enjoyed the challenge and hope that as I run this route more often my ability to climb these hills will improve.

I finished the run having covered 13.5 miles and 1035ft of elevation gain and with a huge blood blister on one of my toes (that is the last time I will be running in my Saucony Kinvaras!).