It's located on Grandfather Mt. North Carolina and is 5 miles strait UP the Mt face.
The last 3 miles are at a 10% grade in order to really weed out the wusses :)
My Dad runs in while pushing my neice in a stroller, both of them wearing their Scottish kilts (the race opens the Highland Games).
This year my brother has decided he would like to complete the race in the top 10% of runners in his age group, which means he needs to complete the race in about 45 minutes...at an average speed of 8:30 minutes a mile.
We all have our flavor of crazy :)
Anywho...
Olympia is kind of stingy when it comes to hills, so I've really had to look around for a good are to hill train. The one I found is a good one I think.
It's .25 of a mile up and then I run down the same distance.
i took Grace with me and the first lap she helped pull me up. The second not so much...by the time we had done two miles she just refused to start running and instead pulled me over to the side of the road and started eating grass. Since I was kind of battling my own motivation for that last mile and was also feeling a bit queazy, (thanks to eating chinese food before I started) I decided to call it a day.
I think part of the problem was I took the first hill to fast. Something that I've always done is really charge up the hills- I dont' know why. Dad thinks it's because I have a rather short stride and can just chop my way up the hill.
When we ran races together it always annyoed Megan that I would pull ahead on hills. The thing is though is that I hate going down hills! I feel like I'm pitching forward, because of...my short stride :) I really have to concentrate on lengthening my stride and letting gravity work for me- another reason to do hill work. Not that The Bear gives you a chance to go down hill- but I read that Boston does!
My bum hurts a bit today. I probably should have done that last mile.
1 comment:
I worry that I am taking my training too lightly...
I'll post some of my garmin graphs and see what you think.
One key problem I have is that there just really aren't hills to train on in Beirut. Some steps, but that's a different kind of training.
I've decided that doing interval sprints is the best I can go for at present. Sprints up hills would be better, but those switch backs on the last section are a real test.
I'm doing squats for strength, interval sprints for lung training and running stairs for hill training. I hope it works.
Anyway, lets swap spreadsheets and strategize. Maybe our Saintly Father will eventually figure out where our blogs are and give us some advice.
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