2023 Year-End Review

Every year, I post a list of goals for the year.  I usually achieve most of my goals, but I sometimes miss a few.  This year my goals were fairly modest, so it’s not too surprising that I nailed them all.

Finish My 4th Circuit of 50 States

At the beginning of 2023, I had already run four or more marathons (or ultras) in 45 states.  To complete my 4th circuit of marathons in every state, I needed to run marathons in Maryland, Oklahoma, Utah, Vermont, and West Virginia.

I got off to a rough start.  I was planning to run the Sun Marathon in Utah in January, but I had to skip that one because of a respiratory infection.  The day before I was scheduled to fly to Utah, I tried running for the first time in a week.  I managed to run just over a mile.  Two miles would’ve been too much.  A marathon was out of the question.

I recovered in time to run the George Washington’s Birthday Marathon in February, giving me my Maryland race.  In May, I ran the Maple Leaf Marathon in Vermont.  Then in the summer, I found another Utah race.  I actually ran two of them.  I ran the Deseret News Marathon in July and the Mt. Nebo Marathon in August.

I finished my fourth circuit in November by running the Marshall University Marathon in West Virginia and the Route 66 Marathon in Oklahoma.

I already had my eye on eventually doing a fifth circuit of states, so I also went out of my way to schedule races in a few states where I already had four marathons.  Besides running my fourth marathon in the states listed above, I ran my fifth marathon or ultra in Kentucky, Maine, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Utah, Kansas, New Hampshire, and Maryland.  By the time I finished my fourth circuit, I just needed nine more states to finish my fifth circuit.

Run Marathons in Two New Countries

This was a fairly soft goal.  At the start of the year, I didn’t have any international trips scheduled, but I had tentative plans to run marathons in Slovakia and Brazil.  I ended up running both of those races, and I also ran the Antarctica Marathon.  More on that later.

Get Back into Shape

At the start of the year, I was out of shape, and I was carrying a little extra weight.  My training was held back by a high hamstring injury in my left leg and sciatica in my right leg.

To get back in shape, I first had to get healthy enough to train.  To lose the weight, I needed to get more exercise, which also depended on getting healthy enough to train.  I’ve never been able to lose weight through diet alone.

Things got worse before they got better.  In January, I came down with a respiratory infection that was mostly likely RSV.  I was completely sidelined for about a week, and it was two more weeks before I was recovered sufficiently to do any real training.

My hamstring injury was healing nicely, but my sciatica got worse.  It flared up so badly that I couldn’t run without pain.

I had a cortisone injection in February.  The first time I had one of those, I noticed improvement immediately.  This time, I felt no better after two weeks.  Then something surprising happened.  I flew to Argentina to join my tour group for the trip to Antarctica.  After the 10 hour flight from Atlanta to Buenos Aires, I fully expected to be stiff and painful.  My sciatica was usually worst after a long period of sitting.  Instead, I got off the plane with no discomfort.  It hasn’t bothered me since.

It's possible, although unlikely, that it just took that long for the cortisone injection to be effective.  It’s much more likely that something else changed.  One possibility is that I had a synovial cyst putting pressure on the nerve, and then the cyst drained, relieving the pressure.  Those things can come and go unexpectedly.

That trip included a 10-day cruise, so my opportunities to run were limited.  When I got back, however, I started gradually building my mileage.  I was careful not to increase my mileage too quickly, but by mid-July, I was running 50+ miles a week.  I’ve kept that up since.

A goal should be measurable.  I wouldn’t consider myself to be “in shape” until I could run fast enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon.  In recent years, most of my BQs have been on downhill courses.  My goal for this year was to BQ on a course that didn’t have any net elevation loss.

By the end of April, I was able to run a marathon in four hours.  To qualify for Boston, I needed to shave off 10 more minutes.  In July, I qualified at the Deseret News Marathon, but that course has almost 3,000 feet of net descent.  In August, I qualified on another sharply downhill course.  It wouldn’t be until September that I would have a chance to test myself on a mostly flat course.  By then I was not only getting into getter shape, but I had also lost the excess weight.

I felt like I made a major breakthrough at the Clarence DeMar Marathon, where I qualified for Boston with more than four minutes to spare.  That course is also downhill, but not by nearly as much.  The first half descends about 600 feet.  The second half is relatively flat, although there’s a tough hill in the last few miles.

Two weeks later, I finally reached my goal of qualifying for Boston on a course that started and finished at the same elevation.  I did that at the Cape Cod Marathon, which is mostly flat.

I followed that up with a BQ at the Baltimore Marathon a week later.  That course is moderately hilly.  Before the year was up, I also had BQs at the Mankato Marathon (moderately hilly), the Marshall University Marathon (flat), and the Route 66 Marathon (moderately hilly).

My final BQ of the year came at the Hawaii Bird Conservation Marathon.  This course descends 3,700 feet, but it’s worth noting that I was 11 minutes faster this year than I was on the same course a year ago.

Of all my goals for 2023, this one was the most important.  It seems like every year I start the year thinking it’s going to be a rebuilding year, but then I end the year about where I started.  This year, I actually rebuilt.  I’m going into 2024 running better than I have in years.  I have a good mileage base, my weight is down, and I’m healthy.

Do My Winter Running Outdoors

Since buying my first treadmill (to train for the Pike’s Peak Marathon), I’ve fallen into the habit of doing all of my winter running on the treadmill.  There’s nothing wrong with training on a treadmill.  It has enabled me to train at a faster pace than I could if I had to run on icy streets.

The problem is that after years of doing half of my training on a treadmill, I developed the bad habit of barely getting my feet off the ground.  On a flat road course, I have an efficient stride.  On a trail course, I don’t pick up my feet enough, and I’m prone to tripping.

In recent years, I’ve started to trip and fall, even in road marathons.  If there’s an uneven spot in the pavement, I’ll catch it with one of my feet.  In the latter half of 2022, I was tripping about once per race.  Sometimes I fell, but even when I didn’t, I would have a few awkward jarring steps.  More than once, I aggravated an existing injury.

To cure myself of that habit, I committed to doing all of my winter running outdoors.  My hope was that running on snow and ice would force me to pick up my feet.

The first big test came in the Antarctica Marathon.  That was a hilly course on a dirt road with lots of rocks.  There were times when I was racing down a hill, knowing that I would have a bad fall if my foot caught one of those rocks.  It scared me, but I got through that race without tripping on anything.

I thought I would make it through the entire year without tripping.  Unfortunately, I tripped on a pothole in the Cape Cod Marathon, and hit the pavement pretty hard.

I’ve continued to use a treadmill for race-walk training, but I haven’t run on a treadmill at all this year.  While I didn’t make it through the whole year without a fall, I improved significantly.  One fall per year is a lot better than one fall per race.

Doing my winter running outdoors had another benefit.  It forced me to reacquaint myself with how to dress for different temperatures.  I didn’t know I would be running in Antarctica, but dressing properly for that race was a lot easier after running in similar temperatures at home.

Place in My Age Group in the National Senior Games

Most of my goals were running goals, but I also had two race-walking goals.  I was competing in two race-walking events at the National Senior Games.  The first was 1,500 meters on a track.  The second was 5,000 meters on a road loop.

Last year, I took fourth place in the 1,500.  There are medals for the top three and ribbons for places five through eight.  I got a late start on my training this year, so my goal was simply to place in the top eight.  My time was one second slower than last year, but I placed higher.  This year, I came in third, which was good for a bronze medal.

In the 5,000, my goal was to place in the top three.  I managed a second place finish, earning me a silver medal.

Move Up Among Minnesota Runners

Since 2015, I’ve been on the Megamarathon List, which lists every runner in the world who has finished at least 300 marathons.  I rank in the top 400 runners in the world and roughly 50th in North America, but as recently as 2021, there were still six runners ahead of me in my home state of Minnesota.

By the end of 2022, I had moved into 5th place among Minnesota runners.  My goal for 2023 was to move into the top four.

To move into 4th place, I needed to run 15 more marathons.  I ran 30 this year, easily moving me into the top four.  The three runners still ahead of me have all run more than 600 marathons.  Only one of them is still active, but it’ll be a long time before I run enough marathons to move into the top three.

The Goal That Wasn’t Even on My List

For the second straight year, my biggest accomplishment of the year was something that wasn’t even on my list of goals.  Last year, it was winning the state championship for men over 60 in a 24-hour race.  This year, it was finishing marathons (or ultras) on every continent.

I had previous run marathons or ultras on five continents.  I was only missing South America and Antarctica.  I had plans to run Maratona do Rio in June, but I wasn’t expecting to run a marathon in Antarctica this year.

I had made a deposit to run the Antarctica Marathon in 2024, but I was also on the waiting list for 2023.  Marathon Tours & Travel was leading two voyages to Antarctica this year, one in early March, and one in late March.  On the outside chance that I might get in off the waiting list, I avoided planning any other races in March.

By the middle of January, I was getting anxious to finish planning my race schedule for March and April.  In particular, I wanted to book a trip to Vienna and Bratislava at the beginning of April.  If I went on the second Antarctica voyage, I wouldn’t get home in time to leave for Vienna.

I called Marathon Tours to find out if there was any chance of getting into one of this year’s voyages.  I didn’t think there was any chance.  I just wanted to know for sure, so I could start booking other trips.

I was shocked to find out that both of this year’s Antarctica trips had room.  I chose the first one, so I could also go on the Vienna/Bratislava trip.  At the time, I was sick with RSV, so I took a leap of faith that I could recover in time to be ready for the Antarctica trip.

Antarctica was my sixth continent.  Three months later, I added South America as my seventh continent by running Maratona do Rio.

Using Music to Improve My Cadence

I live in Minnesota, where we have long cold winters.  For a few months each year, the streets are covered with ice and/or packed snow.  The highway department puts enough on the major roads to melt the snow and keep them dry, but it’s not safe to run on a highway.  When I try to run (or walk) on residential streets, there’s so little traction that my pace is nowhere close to my race pace.  I can put in enough mileage, and I can get a tiring workout.  What I can’t do is work on my speed.

I do most of my winter training on a treadmill.  It’s not exactly the same as training on roads, but I’ve found I can do quality workouts on the treadmill.  I’ve had good results in road races after doing most of my training on a treadmill.  One winter, I even took second place in a 50-mile trail run after doing all of my training on a treadmill.

I haven’t had the same success race-walking on a treadmill.  I’ve consistently found that my walking pace on the treadmill is slower than my walking pace outdoors.  I often feel like I’m working just as hard as I do outdoors, but my pace will be a minute per mile slower.  For a long time, I was at a loss to explain it.  In the last year, I finally came up with a hypothesis.

A lot of people listen to music when they run, whether it’s indoors or outdoors.  I don’t do that unless I’m indoors.  When I’m outdoors, I like to hear my environment.  I like to hear the birds chirping.  I like to know when a car is approaching from behind.  If another runner talks to me during a race, I want to hear what they’re saying.

If I’m indoors – running or walking on a treadmill – I can listen to music without missing other sounds.  When I’m in the home gym in my basement, the only other sound beside my music is the background noise made by the treadmill.

I’ve never needed music to help pass the time when I’m outdoors.  The constant change in scenery is enough.  It gives me a feel for how far I’ve gone.  When my progress feels tangible, the time passes easily enough.

Running or walking on the treadmill is another matter.  It’s mind-numbingly boring.  One mile on the treadmill feels like about four.  I don’t think I’ve ever lasted more than four miles on the treadmill without listening to music.  Even with music, the miles don’t pass as easily as they do outdoors, but having a musical “landscape” goes a long way toward replacing the visual landscape that I’m missing.

When I run on a treadmill, I frequently adjust my gait.  Sometimes I take long strides.  Other times, I take short strides with a rapid cadence.  I’ve noticed a tendency to adjust my cadence so I’m in time with the music.

That works fine when I’m running, because I can easily adjust my stride length.  That doesn’t work as well when I’m walking.  When you run, you have a “flight phase,” during which both feet are off the ground.  When you walk, you don’t have a “flight phase.”  You always have at least one foot in contact with the ground (or the treadmill).  That’s what distinguishes a running gait from a walking gait.  When you’re walking, your stride can’t get much longer.  If you slow your cadence to be in sync with the music, you’re going to have a slower overall pace.

I’m pretty sure that’s why I can’t walk as fast on the treadmill as I do outdoors.  My music is causing me to subconsciously adopt a slower cadence.

My treadmill was a built-in step counter.  I’m not sure how it works, but it seems to be fairly accurate.  I’ve tried to improve my cadence, both indoors and outdoors, but the fastest cadence I’ve ever achieved on the treadmill was 156 strides per minute.  Outdoors, I usually have an average cadence in the 160s, with a peak cadence in the low 180s.  In a recent 10K race, I had an average cadence of 175.

I used to walk with too long of a stride.  I was able to go fast, but it wasn’t efficient.  I was wasting too much energy.  To get faster, I needed to retool my gait, so I had a shorter stride and a faster cadence.  I’ve had some success at that, but only outdoors.  When winter comes, I need to be able to do the same thing on the treadmill.

To test my hypothesis that my music was slowing me down, I created a playlist of songs that have a tempo of roughly 180 beats per minute.  That’s faster that my current average cadence, but it’s the cadence I’ll need to get much faster.

At first, I didn’t know how easy it would be to find a list of songs with the right cadence.  After a quick Google search, I discovered it wasn’t too hard.  180 strides per minute happens to be the same cadence that’s often recommended for people who are trying to improve their running economy.  As a result, there are websites with lists of songs that are 180 beats per minute (or close).  Here’s a screenshot from one such website.  The songs listed here all have tempos between 178 and 182 beats per minute.

I was only familiar with a handful of the songs on the first page of this list, but there are 70 pages.  I went through the whole list to identify songs that were already in my library.  I found about 40.  They spanned seven decades, and they were from different genres, but that’s OK.  I only had two criteria.  I had to enjoy listening to them, and they had to have the desired tempo.

I came up with more than three hours of music that met my criteria.  That’s more than enough for a workout.  I created a playlist on my laptop, connected it to my stereo, and put it in shuffle mode.

Winter weather is still two months away, but today we’re getting all-day rain.  I used that as an opportunity to do a walking workout on the treadmill and test my new playlist.

I initially set the speed to 5.5 mph.  That’s close to the pace that I’ve been walking outdoors, but it seemed much too fast to sustain on the treadmill.  I backed off to 5 mph, and then gradually increased the pace as I warmed up.  As I did, I found it easier to get my cadence up to something that was close to the tempo of the music.

I walked the first mile in 11:38.  That’s slower than I’ve been walking outdoors, but in my second mile I managed to speed up to 11:15.  That’s roughly my race pace for a marathon.

Having faster music doesn’t magically make you run or walk faster.  If your cadence is close to the tempo of the music, you’ll adapt.  If your cadence isn’t close to the tempo, you won’t.  I chose a tempo of 180, because that’s my long-term goal.  It’ll take some work to get there.

After a few songs (and after finding a speed that I could just barely sustain), I sometimes found myself getting in sync with the music.  Sometimes I could do it, and sometimes I couldn’t.  The most important thing is that my music was no longer slowing me down.

I walked seven miles.  Every 10 minutes, I glanced at the step count and did a rough calculation of my average cadence.  At first, it was about 172 strides per minute.  By the end of my workout, it was only averaging 170 beats per minute.  It’s worth noting, that my average cadence walking outdoors rarely gets that fast.  My previous best on the treadmill was only 156.  This was real progress.

The pace felt more tiring when it should have.  My average pace wasn’t as fast as my recent outdoor workouts, but it was more tiring.  I was working hard to get a fast turnover, yet I wasn’t getting as fast of a pace as I do outdoors.  That can only mean that I had a shorter average stride length.  I suspect that’s another case where I’m subconsciously influence by the treadmill.

I think I was limiting my stride in two ways.  First, I was probably avoiding placing my lead foot too far forward for fear of making contact with this plastic frame at the front of the belt.

Limiting the front end of my stride is actually a good thing, but I suspect I was also subconsciously limiting the back end of my stride.  Ideally, you want to roll all the way through your toes.  I can often feel myself doing that when I walk outdoors, but I never seemed to do that today.  I suspect I was afraid of getting too far back on the treadmill.  That really shouldn’t be a concern.  I probably never used more than half the length of the treadmill deck.  I have some awareness of how far back my stride extends when I run, but I have a shorter stride when I walk.  Why be concerned about moving too far back?  Have you ever fallen off the back of a treadmill?  It’s a mistake you only make once.  It’s an experience that puts some fear into you.

Overall, I consider this experiment to be a success.  Using music with a faster tempo made it possible for me to improve my cadence significantly.  It’s still going to be a lot of work, but my music is no longer holding me back.

When winter comes, I’ll be doing treadmill workouts almost every day.  The playlist I have now has enough variety for the occasional workout, but even in shuffle mode, it will start to get stale eventually.  My challenge before winter will be coming up with a longer list.

You’d be surprised how difficult it is to find songs that are that fast.  Even songs that I think of as fast tend to have tempos in the range of 150-160 bpm.  180 is really fast.  To get a longer playlist, I’ll probably have to add songs that are 90 bpm and take two strides per beat.  That’ll be a future experiment.

The Advantages of a Home Gym

I started running while I was in college.  Before I graduated, I also took up weight training.  I bought a set of weights and a cheap weight bench that required assembly from an assortment of metal tubes, nuts, and bolts.  The bench didn’t seem real sturdy, but I wasn’t using a lot of weight, so it met my needs.  More important, it was something I could afford while going to school and working part-time.

While I was in college, I was living with my parents.  They were nice enough to let me use my mom’s “sewing room” as my weight room until I graduated.  I also bought an abdominal board that could be used for incline sit-ups.

The nice thing about that weight bench was that it could be disassembled and stored in a box for transport.  That made it easy to take it with me when I moved into an apartment.  I was living by myself, but I still got a two-bedroom apartment.  I used the second bedroom as my weight room.

Shortly after Deb and I got married, we bought a house.  I set up my weights in a room in the basement.  By now, I was able to handle more weight.  I no longer felt comfortable using a weight bench that seemed kind of rickety.  I found a fitness store that built their own equipment by welding 2x2 beams of iron together.  I replaced my department store bench with a nice sturdy bench that would last a lifetime.  The bench could be adjusted in different ways, so I could do incline or decline bench presses.  It also had an attachment for doing leg exercises, and another one for doing curls in a seated position.

By now, I owned a variety of bars and cast-iron weight disks of various sizes.  Over the next few years, I bought other pieces of equipment, so I could do more exercises.  First, I bought a pair of squat stands with wide heavy bases.  Next, I bought a high lat station, that also had cables and pullies that could be used for various rowing exercises.

Finally, I bought a fly attachment, and I replaced by curl board attachment with a better one that was padded on both sides.

I didn’t buy this equipment all at once.  These purchases were spread out over a period of about five years.  By the time I was done, I spent about $1,000 on weight lifting equipment.  I was set up to do just about any exercise that can be done using free weights.  I owned enough weight disks that I didn’t have to interrupt my workouts to move weights from one station to another.  I could set up everything before I started, and then move quickly from one exercise to the next.

I had friends who had gym memberships.  That had access to other types of equipment, but I was appalled by the cost of their gym memberships.  In the first five years alone, they spent more on their memberships than I did buying all my equipment.  Weight disks and benches don’t wear out.  Once I had them, I could use them for a lifetime with no additional cost.  It’s 30 years later, and I’m still using the same equipment.  There was an up-front investment, but since then I’ve saved thousands of dollars in membership fees.

At first, I just had weight-lifting equipment, but then I bought a stationary bike.  Now I could supplement my running with aerobic cross-training, and I didn’t have to leave my home.

The last major addition to my home gym was a treadmill.  Throughout my 20s and 30s, I was content to run outside.  Then I set my sights on running the Pike’s Peak Marathon.  That was the same year than I turned 40.

The Pike’s Peak Marathon is a trail run that starts in Manitou Springs and goes all the way up and down Pike’s Peak.  In the first half of the race, you ascend more than 7,800 feet.  That’s a mile and a half of ascent!  The average grade is 10.7 percent, but some parts of the trail are much steeper.

I don’t live near any mountains.  There’s no place I could go where I could practice running up a steep grade for mile after mile after mile.  That was my initial motivation to buy a treadmill.  I found a nice durable treadmill that could simulate grades up to 15 percent.  I did workouts where I alternated between running on a 5 percent grade and walking on a 15 percent grade.  At first, I could only keep this up for 30 minutes.  Then my quads would be screaming.

I kept up this training until I could routinely run uphill for an hour.  Then I started adding weekly long runs.  I gradually worked up to the point where I was simulating the entire ascent.  It took me three hours.

For the race itself, I had to contend with the thin air at elevations going up to 14,000 feet.  There’s no way I could prepare for that, but at least I was ready for the climbing.  The treadmill prepared me for that.  Despite living and training in Minnesota, I finished in the top third of the field.  Almost all the runners who finished ahead of me lived in Colorado, Wyoming, or Utah.

Now that I had a treadmill, I couldn’t resist using it for most of my winter training.  I live in a cold climate where the snow and ice stay on the ground all winter.  Running outside not only involves bundling up for cold temperatures, but also running on layers of packed snow and ice.  The best you can do on icy streets is to shuffle along slowly.  On the treadmill, I could train at race pace or faster.

Now, in addition to weight training, I could also run and bike, all without leaving my basement.

It’s worth noting that the treadmill and the stationary bike have moving parts, and they eventually wear out.  I’m now on my second stationary bike and my third treadmill.  These pieces of equipment are more expensive than the weights were, so it’s no longer clear that owning my own equipment is still significantly less expensive than having a gym membership.  It’s worth it, though, because of the convenience.

If you go to a gym to exercise, you have to take the time to drive there and change clothes before you start working out.  Then you have to shower and change clothes before driving home.  That takes a lot of extra time.  With a home gym, you just have to change into workout clothes and walk down to the basement.  Working out in my own basement has made it possible for me to do short workouts before work just be getting up a little earlier.

Often, the hardest part of a workout is getting started.  Who’s more likely to start a workout: the person who has to drive somewhere or the person who just has to walk down to his basement?

I still haven’t got to the biggest advantage of a home gym.  I never have to wait until a piece of equipment is available.  I can do my exercises in any order I choose.  The equipment is never in use by someone else.  (OK, Deb sometimes uses the treadmill, but we can pretty easily coordinate our workout schedules.)

I don’t know about you, but I need to listen to music while I work out.  I especially need music when I’m on the treadmill.  I don’t use a portable music player of any kind.  I don’t like the idea of sweating all over a pair of headphones.  I also wouldn’t want any cords that could get caught on something while I’m lifting weights.  Because I’m the only one in the room, I can fill the room with music.  I have a stereo in my living room, and I ran some speaker wire through the floorboards, so I can have a remote set of speakers in my exercise room.

I’ve always felt fortunate to have the convenience of a home gym, but now it’s more important than ever.  Because of COVID-19, lots of businesses are temporarily closed, including gyms.  People who have gym memberships no longer have access to the equipment they usually use.  Even while sheltering at home, I can still do all the same cross-training exercises I did before. Thankfully, I can still run outside, and the weather is starting to get nice.  It’s nice to know, however, that I could also run without leaving the house, if I was willing to do all my running on the treadmill.

Treadmill Workout: Cowie's Hill and Field's Hill

I believe in specificity of training.  I try to include workouts that prepare me for the specific challenges I’m going to face in a race.  For example, if I’m preparing for a race that’s likely to be hot, I’ll do some of my runs at the hottest time of the day.

I do most races on the strength of my current fitness.  When you race every weekend, you can’t train for each one.  Instead, I focus on a few races that I know will challenge me.  I call these my “A” races.  One of my “A” races for this year is the Comrades Marathon.

Comrades is an 87 kilometer ultramarathon in South Africa.  It’s a point-to-point race that changes direction each year.  This year is called an “up” year, because its run in the direction that has an uphill trend.  Here’s the elevation profile for the “up” course.

Comrades has rolling hills throughout the course, but most of them aren't that big.  The hills that are big enough to get your attention have names.

I’m most concerned about the first 37 kilometers.  Besides including three of the named hills, it also has a net gain of about 700 meters.  That’s an average grade of about two percent.

Today I did a treadmill workout that should help prepare me for this part of the course.  Because my workout was only 10 miles, I ran it at a faster pace than I’ll run on race day.

I generally start slow and give myself about a mile to get up to pace.  I do that on a level grade.  By the end of the first mile, I was running at 7.5 mph.  That’s an 8:00 pace.  I like to do workouts at this pace or slightly faster, because that’s my marathon pace.

Once I was up to pace, I started gradually increasing the incline while maintaining the same pace.  Over the next few miles, I increased the grade in ½ percent increments until it was two percent.  This simulates the miles between the big hills.  It’s not very steep, but it’s still slightly uphill.

The first named hill is Cowie’s Hill.  It’s 2.1 milometers (1.3 miles) long with an average grade of 4.8 percent.  I simulated Cowie’s Hill on the treadmill.  I couldn’t remember this off the top of my head, so I took a guess.  I ran the next 1.25 miles at a 5.5 percent grade.  I backed the speed down to 7.0 mph (8:34 pace).  That’s still much faster than I’ll during the race.

After about half a mile, it started getting tough.  In the race, I’ll go at an easier pace, and I may take a few short walking breaks.  In my workouts, I’ll take it faster, much like doing speed work on a track.  The next three quarters of a mile seemed to take forever.  When I reached the “top,” I set the include down to zero, but set the speed back up to 7.5 mph.

In the race, there will be a short downgrade, but then the course starts climbing again.  Instead, I gave myself about a half mile of level grade, but then gradually nudged it back up.  By the time I reached Field’s Hill, I was already on a two percent grade.  I was still going 7.5 mph, so my legs were getting fatigued.

Field’s Hill is 3.2 kilometers (2.0 miles), with an average grade of 5.8 percent.  It’s actually the steep part of a much longer hill.  Again, I couldn’t remember the numbers exactly, but I took my best guess.  I ran the next two miles at a 5.0 percent grade, with the speed set to 7.0 mph.

At first it was a relief to decrease the speed.  Then the grade began to wear on me.  After half a mile, I was already asking myself how much of the hill I had left.  After that, the remaining 1.5 miles seemed to pass quicker.  It was tiring, but I got used to it.  With a quarter mile to go, I tried to imagine that I could see the top of the hill.  In reality, there no top.  The road levels off briefly and then starts uphill again.  I'll worry about that section another day.

After my simulated Field’s hill, I only had a half mile left to finish my 10 mile workout.  I set the grade back to zero, but once again increased my speed to 7.5 mph.  Besides training for Comrades, I’m continually training for road marathons.  I like to run at my marathon race pace or faster as much as I can.

One workout isn’t going to prepare me for Comrades, but it's a start.  My hope is that if I continue to sprinkle workouts like this into my training, I’ll be able to handle the real hills on race day.

Pacing Yourself with Variable Length Walking Breaks

For the past six months, roughly half of my workouts have been a blend of running and walking.  I’m emphasizing these workouts because I’ve been training for a 48-hour race.  To run for that long, you have to slow the pace down to something you can do all day long without getting tired.  In my race, I’ll need to average 14:24 per mile for 48 hours.  I’ll start out a little faster than that, but it will still be a pace that’s too slow for me to comfortably run it.

What I’m doing in my training runs is similar to what I’ll do during the race.  I alternate running and walking, but I don’t have a fixed ratio.  I vary the length of my walking breaks to keep me on a consistent average pace.

In my race, I’ll be running a loop that’s roughly 1.05 miles.  I have a loop through my neighborhoods that’s 1.1 miles.  That’s close enough.  In training, my goal has been to maintain an average pace of 12 minutes per lap.  That’s a little faster than my race pace.  I like to train at a faster pace, so my pace on race day will feel easy.

Here’s how I pace myself.  I run the first lap at a pace that feels natural.  Let’s say I finish it in 9:45.  My target was 12:00, so I’m 2:15 ahead of schedule.  I start my second lap by walking until my watch reads 12 minutes.  That means my first walking break is 2:15.  When my walking break is over, I run the rest of the lap.

When I start running, I’m already part of the way through my next lap, so I don’t have to run as far to finish the lap.  As a result, I’ll be even farther ahead of schedule at the end of two laps.  Let’s say I finish the second lap in 20 minutes.  My target time for two laps was 24 minutes (2 times 12).  Now I get a walking break of four minutes to start the third lap.

I keep repeating this process.  At first, my walking breaks grow noticeably from one lap to the next.  Eventually, the difference becomes negligible.  I’m always finishing laps ahead of schedule, but the average trends toward my target of 12 minutes.

The beauty of this pacing method is that you don’t need to know what pace you’re running, and you don’t need to know what pace you’re walking.  By varying the length of your walking breaks, you automatically attain the correct overall pace.  That’s what really counts.  The goal is to run/walk at an overall pace that’s sustainable for whatever distance you’re racing.

This pacing method automatically adjusts to changes in either your running or walking gait.  Let’s say that as you get fatigued, your running pace slows down a little.  Let’s say your walking pace also slows down a little.  Does that mean your overall pace slows down?  No.  It means you do proportionally more running and less walking to maintain the same overall pace.

This method also automatically adjusts for downtime, if it’s not excessive.  Let’s say I stop for a minute to go to the bathroom.  That minute comes out of my next walking break.  I’ll still start running when I reach my target time, although I probably won’t get as far around my loop before I need to run again.

I run continuously in marathons, but take walking breaks in races that are significantly farther than a marathon.  If you normally take walking breaks in marathons, you can use this pacing method.  You only need to know what pace you’re trying to run, on average.

This isn’t suitable for races where the grade or terrain differs significantly from one mile to the next.  I don’t use it on technical trails or in point-to-point races with long or steep hills.  Most of the ultras I’ve done have been fixed time races on short road loops.  This is ideal for those types of races.

When I started doing these workouts last summer, I was doing them outdoors.  Lately, I’ve been doing them on a treadmill.  I continued to think in terms of 1.1 mile “laps” so I could keep using the same target for my “lap” times.  Instead of starting a walking break each time I finish a loop through my neighborhood, I start a walking break when my total distance is a multiple of 1.1 miles.  Now that it’s getting closer to my race, I’m adjusting my simulated lap to be 1.05 miles.  That’s the length of the laps I’ll be running in my race, so I need to make the mental adjustment.

This type of workout takes discipline.  When you’re walking you need to pay attention to your time, so you know when to walk.  In the treadmill version of the workout, you also need to pay attention to the distance when you’re running, so you know when to walk again.

Since moving to the treadmill, I’ve sometimes been tempted to change the routine.  Running on the treadmill can seem monotonous.  Switching between running and walking gives you some variety, but constantly watching the time and distance can accentuate the monotony.  Sometimes I tell myself, “You only have a few miles to go.  You could just run the rest and get done quicker.”  I resist the temptation.  Other times I’m tempted to run until the end of one song and then walk until the end of the next song.  Changes like that might make it feel easier, but there’s no guarantee I would stay on my target pace.  Again, I resist the temptation.

I’m training for a race that will take a great deal of mental discipline.  I need to keep my head in the game for 48 hours.  Compared to that, staying disciplined for two hours, even on the treadmill, should be easy.  I’m not just training my body.  I’m training my mind.

This workout isn’t for everyone, but it’s a great way to keep yourself from going out too fast in a long race.