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<p>Every October, the local Roadrunners host a hilly road race in my home town. The fact that I have never run in this race, nor even attempted a training run on any of these roads, some of which are only ¾ mile from my home, is not a coincidence. </p>
<p>About 80 percent of my training runs are along the Hudson River at lunchtime, and other than running over the pedestrian bridge that carries foot traffic over I-787 to the Corning Preserve and the bike path (aka Henry Hudson Way), there is no more than about 15 to 20 feet of elevation change from start to finish. My training runs around my home are either on the HS track, or in some of the flatter, picturesque roads at the foot of the escarpment. I should post some photos some time, I know. But in almost 9 years of running, I’ve successfully avoided the hilly roads that comprise the “New Scotland 7.1 mile race”. Until Sunday, that is.</p>
<p>Being the well organized , thinking man’s runner that I am, for the last 4 months I’ve had a reminder popping up on my desktop – “<em>New Scotland 7.1 mile race, October 3<sup>rd</sup>: Need to start training on hills</em>”. And being the procrastinator that I am, I’ve continually set the reminder to pop up in a week or so, while never actually doing any hill training. </p>
<p>However, I have been following a Half Marathon program that I modified from Runner’s World Magazine. It’s peppered with Interval Training, mostly Cruise Intervals (10k race pace), with a salting of Speed Intervals (1 mile to 5k race pace). So while I can’t say that I went into this race feeling confident in my preparation (no kidding), in retrospect I think I can say that the intervals prepared me for the race well enough that I ran a fairly steady race from start to finish. On average, I’d been running a total of about 40 miles per week for the past 6 weeks, with an additional 10 miles of walking per week as well. I suppose the hills that are part of my daily walk commute may have helped as well.</p>
<p>I woke up at 5:00 AM for the 10:00 AM start. Since it is an informal race, with no pre-race registration, I wanted to arrive at 9:00 in order to get registered and do a nominal warm up. I’d been told that the first mile is downhill, and the last mile-and-a-half (except for the final ½ mile or so, which is on a trail in the town park) is uphill, so I wanted to familiarize myself with those sections of the road. I’m quite glad that I did, as I discovered that the first half-mile was actually uphill, and the last half-mile of roadway was downhill, which I definitely needed to know in order to strategize. In all, I ran 2 miles of warm up, with no striders. Just having the heart rate elevated a little bit seemed a better plan for 7 hilly miles.</p>
<p>I noticed on the sign-in sheet that the registrants who signed in before me were all members of the roadrunners club, with two exceptions. The two exceptions were, like me, community members. That helped cement the plan that I was not going to be running for hardware today, but just to meet my own time goal, and also to try to finish in the top 50% of finishers. I usually try for top 10%, and top 15% is close enough to feel like I ran well.</p>
<p>When we lined up on the road, I positioned myself right about in the middle of the pack, and determined that I would NOT go out too fast. My goal was to run an average of 7:30/mile over the course of the race, and I wanted to establish that pace by running the first mile, which had a gradual uphill ½ mile followed by a not-so-gradual downhill ½ mile, at that pace. Loved it – I hit the 1 mile marker at 7:29 according to my watch. The next mile would be basically uphill, and a good part of mile 3 would be, also, so I started up the long hill feeling better than I’ve ever felt at the start of the 2nd mile of any race. </p>
<p>I missed the 2 mile marker and the 3 mile marker, but noticed the 5k marker just as we turned onto a road that I knew would be fairly flat, with a downhill section near the end. At that point I had just passed two runners whom I’d been trying to reel in for all of miles two and three. I’d previously passed a couple of runners at the water station which was around the 2 ½ mile point. I hit 5k in 23:57, which is a 7:39 pace, and I could tell my goal of 7:30 was pretty realistic, as long as that last hilly section was not the killer I’d made it in my head. I was pleased that I’d run miles two and three (plus .1 miles of mile 4) in about 16:30, which was sub 8:00 pace, though just barely. Those two miles included just about 200 feet of elevation gain. I didn’t know that prior to the race, but was pleased when I saw that on the course elevation profile later that morning. (See link to course below)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.runningahead.com/maps/e49d51ea7ad947fba8522d6ca77a2338" target="_blank">NS 7.1 miler</a></p>
<p>(Does anyone know how to make the course show up here without having to follow the link?)</p>
<p>What goes up must come down, at least when the start and finish are in the same place. So from 5k on, I was feeling pretty optimistic that I would run a good race with a good strong finish, though the last hill was still looming in my mind. I kept a pretty even distance between myself and the runner in front of me over all of mile 4, and hit the 4.0 mile mark at 30:07 (7:10 mile). I missed the 5 mile marker and the 6 mile marker, but by that point, going up the “monster” hill near the end (120 feet of elevation gain in ½ mile), I was receiving encouragement from the runner who had been ahead of me for about the last two miles. Turned out he’d be running the Mohawk-Hudson Marathon in 7 days, so he was running this race fairly easily, as a tune-up, I guess. He told me when his GPS told him we hit 10k, and I saw about 47:00 on my watch at that point, so I knew I must still be about on pace, with less than a mile, a good deal of which would be downhill, ahead of me. </p>
<p>The runner who had been encouraging me, and one or two others who passed me on the way up the steep hill I’d just climbed, seemed to lower the hammer as we came down the last hill on the road. I let them go and made no real effort to stay with them, but did manage to come in with a time of 53:48 on my watch. Funny, for one who tries to prepare well for races, I never thought to figure out what time I would need to run in order to cover 7.1 miles at a 7:30 pace. I guess it was a good thing, because before I had a chance to do the math, several people mentioned that the race was more like 7.2 miles long, the mapping function on my RA log says it works out to 7.17 miles. 53:48 / 7.17 miles = 7:30 pace on the nose.</p>
<p>It’s now Wednesday and the post-race soreness I expected never came, so I think I took a pretty conservative approach to this race, considering it was my “A” race for the season. I still have two more races on my fall calendar – a 5k in 10 days, and a hilly 15k a month from today. I ran 3.5 at about an 11:00 pace on Monday, went a little longer (6.25) at about 10:00 pace on Tuesday, and am going to take today off. We’ll see what happens when I lace’em up on Thursday.</p>
<p>Stats: </p>
<p>91 runners overall, I finished 32<sup>nd</sup>. Almost snuck into the top 33%</p>
<p>M40-49: 10<sup>th</sup> out of 24</p>
<p>1<sup>st</sup> runner over the line ran a 39:45, which is about a 5:33 pace. Impressive for the terrain</p>
<p>1<sup>st</sup> M40-49 ran a 48:25, about 6:45 pace. I’m thinking I can run a little closer to that time next year. I need to learn how to race downhill, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>Thanks for reading.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Brian</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Every October, the local Roadrunners host a hilly road race in my home town. The fact that I have never run in this race, nor even attempted a training run on any of these roads, some of which are only ¾ mile from my home, is not a coincidence. </p>
<p>About 80 percent of my training runs are along the Hudson River at lunchtime, and other than running over the pedestrian bridge that carries foot traffic over I-787 to the Corning Preserve and the bike path (aka Henry Hudson Way), there is no more than about 15 to 20 feet of elevation change from start to finish. My training runs around my home are either on the HS track, or in some of the flatter, picturesque roads at the foot of the escarpment. I should post some photos some time, I know. But in almost 9 years of running, I’ve successfully avoided the hilly roads that comprise the “New Scotland 7.1 mile race”. Until Sunday, that is.</p>
<p>Being the well organized , thinking man’s runner that I am, for the last 4 months I’ve had a reminder popping up on my desktop – “<em>New Scotland 7.1 mile race, October 3<sup>rd</sup>: Need to start training on hills</em>”. And being the procrastinator that I am, I’ve continually set the reminder to pop up in a week or so, while never actually doing any hill training. </p>
<p>However, I have been following a Half Marathon program that I modified from Runner’s World Magazine. It’s peppered with Interval Training, mostly Cruise Intervals (10k race pace), with a salting of Speed Intervals (1 mile to 5k race pace). So while I can’t say that I went into this race feeling confident in my preparation (no kidding), in retrospect I think I can say that the intervals prepared me for the race well enough that I ran a fairly steady race from start to finish. On average, I’d been running a total of about 40 miles per week for the past 6 weeks, with an additional 10 miles of walking per week as well. I suppose the hills that are part of my daily walk commute may have helped as well.</p>
<p>I woke up at 5:00 AM for the 10:00 AM start. Since it is an informal race, with no pre-race registration, I wanted to arrive at 9:00 in order to get registered and do a nominal warm up. I’d been told that the first mile is downhill, and the last mile-and-a-half (except for the final ½ mile or so, which is on a trail in the town park) is uphill, so I wanted to familiarize myself with those sections of the road. I’m quite glad that I did, as I discovered that the first half-mile was actually uphill, and the last half-mile of roadway was downhill, which I definitely needed to know in order to strategize. In all, I ran 2 miles of warm up, with no striders. Just having the heart rate elevated a little bit seemed a better plan for 7 hilly miles.</p>
<p>I noticed on the sign-in sheet that the registrants who signed in before me were all members of the roadrunners club, with two exceptions. The two exceptions were, like me, community members. That helped cement the plan that I was not going to be running for hardware today, but just to meet my own time goal, and also to try to finish in the top 50% of finishers. I usually try for top 10%, and top 15% is close enough to feel like I ran well.</p>
<p>When we lined up on the road, I positioned myself right about in the middle of the pack, and determined that I would NOT go out too fast. My goal was to run an average of 7:30/mile over the course of the race, and I wanted to establish that pace by running the first mile, which had a gradual uphill ½ mile followed by a not-so-gradual downhill ½ mile, at that pace. Loved it – I hit the 1 mile marker at 7:29 according to my watch. The next mile would be basically uphill, and a good part of mile 3 would be, also, so I started up the long hill feeling better than I’ve ever felt at the start of the 2nd mile of any race. </p>
<p>I missed the 2 mile marker and the 3 mile marker, but noticed the 5k marker just as we turned onto a road that I knew would be fairly flat, with a downhill section near the end. At that point I had just passed two runners whom I’d been trying to reel in for all of miles two and three. I’d previously passed a couple of runners at the water station which was around the 2 ½ mile point. I hit 5k in 23:57, which is a 7:39 pace, and I could tell my goal of 7:30 was pretty realistic, as long as that last hilly section was not the killer I’d made it in my head. I was pleased that I’d run miles two and three (plus .1 miles of mile 4) in about 16:30, which was sub 8:00 pace, though just barely. Those two miles included just about 200 feet of elevation gain. I didn’t know that prior to the race, but was pleased when I saw that on the course elevation profile later that morning. (See link to course below)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.runningahead.com/maps/e49d51ea7ad947fba8522d6ca77a2338" target="_blank">NS 7.1 miler</a></p>
<p>(Does anyone know how to make the course show up here without having to follow the link?)</p>
<p>What goes up must come down, at least when the start and finish are in the same place. So from 5k on, I was feeling pretty optimistic that I would run a good race with a good strong finish, though the last hill was still looming in my mind. I kept a pretty even distance between myself and the runner in front of me over all of mile 4, and hit the 4.0 mile mark at 30:07 (7:10 mile). I missed the 5 mile marker and the 6 mile marker, but by that point, going up the “monster” hill near the end (120 feet of elevation gain in ½ mile), I was receiving encouragement from the runner who had been ahead of me for about the last two miles. Turned out he’d be running the Mohawk-Hudson Marathon in 7 days, so he was running this race fairly easily, as a tune-up, I guess. He told me when his GPS told him we hit 10k, and I saw about 47:00 on my watch at that point, so I knew I must still be about on pace, with less than a mile, a good deal of which would be downhill, ahead of me. </p>
<p>The runner who had been encouraging me, and one or two others who passed me on the way up the steep hill I’d just climbed, seemed to lower the hammer as we came down the last hill on the road. I let them go and made no real effort to stay with them, but did manage to come in with a time of 53:48 on my watch. Funny, for one who tries to prepare well for races, I never thought to figure out what time I would need to run in order to cover 7.1 miles at a 7:30 pace. I guess it was a good thing, because before I had a chance to do the math, several people mentioned that the race was more like 7.2 miles long, the mapping function on my RA log says it works out to 7.17 miles. 53:48 / 7.17 miles = 7:30 pace on the nose.</p>
<p>It’s now Wednesday and the post-race soreness I expected never came, so I think I took a pretty conservative approach to this race, considering it was my “A” race for the season. I still have two more races on my fall calendar – a 5k in 10 days, and a hilly 15k a month from today. I ran 3.5 at about an 11:00 pace on Monday, went a little longer (6.25) at about 10:00 pace on Tuesday, and am going to take today off. We’ll see what happens when I lace’em up on Thursday.</p>
<p>Stats: </p>
<p>91 runners overall, I finished 32<sup>nd</sup>. Almost snuck into the top 33%</p>
<p>M40-49: 10<sup>th</sup> out of 24</p>
<p>1<sup>st</sup> runner over the line ran a 39:45, which is about a 5:33 pace. Impressive for the terrain</p>
<p>1<sup>st</sup> M40-49 ran a 48:25, about 6:45 pace. I’m thinking I can run a little closer to that time next year. I need to learn how to race downhill, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>Thanks for reading.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Brian</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
