Learn to Love the Hills

Happy Saturday Everyone! By the time this post pops up, I will hopefully be out and about doing my long run. It is actually my final long run for Malibu Marathon but since I had ran Chicago just a couple of weeks ago, the tapering period is somewhat modified from your typical marathon tapering period. This is the second time I've ran 2 marathons a month apart so I am not an expert at how to recover while still maintaining fitness for the next race. My schedules says that I should get in 2-3 hours of running, so that is what I am going to do. Just head out for 2-3 hours and see where I end up. The last time I ran 2 back-to-back marathons was last year when I ran LA a month after OC. Anyways, enough of this talk because today's post is about running hills.

(Note: As of 10/29/10 - the Big Sur Marathon is officially sold out of regular entries)

Now that I have signed up for the Big Sur Marathon, I was told that I need to learn to love hill training. I didn't even "like" it to start with and I'm sure by the time it is all said and done that I will most likely hate it. I think the most I can do to bridge the huge gap between love and hate is to prepare myself for the course as much as I can. I don't live in the most hilly area so I may even have to emulate some of the hill workouts on the treadmill. So to help me understand what I have gotten myself into, I did some research on the most severe part of the course (Hurricane Point).

Where: Big Sur International Marathon, Big Sur, Calif.
When It Hits: At 9.8 miles 
How Long, How Hard: 2.2 miles, rising 520 feet, 4.5 percent grade

So, what I will likely do in these next couple of weeks is to set the treadmill up to 4.5% grade and start by walking it and see how long it takes me just to walk the 2 miles. Then as the weeks progress, I will start adding flatter miles before doing this hill exercise or slowly increase the speed of the hill part until I can do it at a 10 min/mile pace. I have so much time to train for this thing that I can experiment with a few different methods. I also have a couple of half and full marathons peppered in between now and then. My main goal is just to enjoy this race and not suffer too much out there...because I don't want to miss a moment of this....