Hyland Post: Start of week #2 and Hills

3 miles today.....Rest day on the schedule but once again I had to change things around a little.

---------------

So here's a recap of my first week into marathon training:

Miles Run:  25.55
Days Run:  5
Crosstraining:  Weights, Biked 10 miles
Time training:  4 1/2 hours

I'm looking forward to seeing week number two getting on it's way.  Actually it did today with a nice three mile run to start off the second week of training.  This week I'll have on the schedule 5,3,5,Rest,9,Crosstrain for the rest of the days.

Given the marathon I'm training for is going to be hilly, I've been trying to get out at least once a week for a hill workout.  It's pretty flat out my front door.  My long run this past week helped accomplish the hill running I needed but I still need to find some tougher hills to run.  There are some longer hills in a nearby city that I may run next weekend.  Even if you're not training for a hilly marathon, training on hills can really help improve your marathon time(in my opinion) since it will make the flat parts feel easier.

Ok, maybe not this hard.

No hills in your area?  Well you could alway resort to the treadmill if needed.  Most treadmills have a pretty significant incline.  I just prefer to run outside especially since I hate the treadmill.

One thing I did notice in this weekends run....hills are still hard.  Even though I've been running for about 2.5 years, I have probably been a typical runner and avoided most tough hills.  If you avoid them, don't worry about it....unless you are running a hilly marathon.  Of course, both marathons that I've already run(Bayshore Marathon and Detroit Marathon, both in Michigan) were overall flat marathons with maybe a few rolling hills but nothing serious.  Here's a peek at the elevation that I'll be dealing with in May:

Yikes!

That looks pretty bad for a few miles, huh?  But here's what it looks like from their website:

Click to see larger

Now that doesn't looks so bad, huh?  It's an elevation gain about about 1,000 feet and a loss of about the same.  My plan is to just run this one for fun.  I probably should have a time in mind to finish but we'll just see how things go.  Normally, I would shoot for a time of less than 4 hours but I'm not sure how that's going to go given the hills involved.

How about you?  Do you like running hills?

Have a great day and....Keep Running!!!!!