20 Miles of Hills

Saturday I set out on the last of the Marathon Masochist series. This was a 22-mile course, with long hills. My lovely wife rode her bike with me as my support vehicle, and some of those hills are easier to run up than to bike.
I was going to run the whole 22 miles, but that steep downhill after the 6-mile uphill was just too much on the quads. There's no point in injuring myself at this stage. So after I crossed 20 miles, I walked, stretched, and jogged the last 2 miles.
I figure if I could do those 20 hilly miles, the flat course of the marathon should be cake.

16 miles

Saturday I did my Masochist Marathon Training #2, a 16-mile route with some big hills. It was actually easier than I thought it would be: about 6 of the first 8 miles are uphill, so when I turned around, it was a lot of downhill, with two BIG climbs. The only issue I had was that there was some really rocky terrain near the mid-point, which put a lot of unneeded stress on my ankles and lower legs. I'm still a bit sore, but I'm OK.
I ran it in 2:25, or about a 9-minute-mile pace.

Then last night I did a two-mile recovery run, nice and easy, on the track at Rec Hall.

Murderous Marathon Training #1

Saturday was the first in the series of increasingly long runs, designed to get me ready for the 3-4 hours of running I'll be doing in the Marathon.

This first run was a 14-mile out-and-back course through the woods behind Tussey. It's starts out with a 3.2 mile uphill, which I did in about 30 minutes. The next 4 miles are pretty steadily downhill. That too I did in about 30 minutes, so at the turn-around I was at 1 hour even. So, then I had to turn around, and those 4 miles I had just run down I now had to run back up. That hurt, but there was never a doubt that I could make it. I was mighty happy to see the top of that though: that section took me just under 40 minutes. So finally it was 3.2 miles down, and even though I had already gone 11 miles, a felt strong running. I crushed that section in 23 minutes, which is very fast for me.

That was the longest run I'd every attempted, and I completed it in 2 hours, 4 minutes. That's just slightly slower than my half-marathon pace from last year, but it was also a much harder run.

Masochist Marathon Training Series

The response for the "Tour de Half" Half-Marathon run has been great: it should be a pretty good group.

In addition, I invited anyway one wants to join for some very tough, long runs over the next four weekends. I call it the "Masochist Marathon Training Series," because each of the runs involves big hills. I figure that a couple of these will be harder than the Marathon itself.