I Walked

It’s been some years since I’ve considered myself a hill runner. The same hills in races I do have become increasingly hard.  And this has morphed into a mental block.  I go to sleep the night before dreading the hills I will be running in the morning. 

Last Saturday I ran the hilly Frank Nealon 15K (a.k.a. the Boston Tune Up), which is part of this year’s Grand Prix series.  It is typically held two or three weeks before the Boston Marathon.  It’s now a modified out-and-back course with two loops in the middle. Leading up to the race, my mileage had been so-so, inching up toward 30 miles weekly after having run only 44 in January as I recovered from a glute medius issue. This had kept me from running the New Bedford Half Marathon in March, the first Grand Prix race. I had fit in a 9M and 10M run two weeks before the BTU, but my speed and hill work was lacking. Bottom line, I did not have a good feeling about this race.

So off we went. It was a good day for running – in the mid 50s and not too windy. My goal was to run an average 8:20 pace. Last year I had run 8:06, was in better shape and a year younger! Starting conservatively, the first three miles were net downhill and I averaged 8:08.  Then we came to the middle two miles – where the real hills were, with the steepest one in the middle of the fourth mile.  Both my cadence and stride length tanked as people started passing me, though some others were struggling as well. We were co-slogging!

I abhor walking in a race. I have not bought into the Galloway Run-Walk method. When I enter a race, it’s to run, not power walk.  It’s a pride thing I suppose. And deep down I think even a slow uphill jog is faster than walking.  So, I inched up this hill, turned a corner and saw an even steeper rise.  I was not enjoying it at all.  I started thinking about the reasons I had for skipping this race. Yet here I was, having made the effort to travel down from Vermont. Then I started thinking: “Hey, what do I really have to prove?” As I plodded along, I didn’t have an answer. So, almost reflexively I started walking, just for five or six seconds, and then resumed my slog.  After 15 seconds of that I walked another five or six seconds, then 15 seconds of slog before walking another few seconds and finally cresting the hill which quickly turned into a nice even downhill. 

Maybe that brief amount of walking gave me some respite so when the downhill came, I could pick it up.  Anyhow, post-race I saw my split for that mile was 8:43, which turned out to be my slowest mile enroute to an 8:22 average pace, just short of my goal.  Two other miles had good-sized hills and my time on those was 8:36 and 8:33, but I did not walk on them.  Maybe that was the difference. Not sure.   

I recall walking in the last eight miles of the 2001 Boston Marathon.  I had not finished Boston in the previous three tries and was determined to do so, even with some walking.  As I finished that race, I was relieved to be done without any memorable negative thoughts about having walked.  As I finished the BTU, the same thoughts emerged.  I had prevailed and run a race in a respectable time on a short base of training.  Now I needed to give myself a good week to recover with easy runs. 

I have an October half marathon scheduled with a sizable hill in mile 12. I don’t want to think I set a precedent at the BTU for walking there.  But if my training has been cut short, for whatever reason, and I still choose to run that race, a bit (just a bit!) of walking might be in order.