Heartbreak Hill Half Recap: Three Races, Two Days, Six Lessons

Trying new things keeps life exciting. Running is no exception. I've been running close to two decades, but I'd never raced more than once in one weekend. So when Runner's World announced the Heartbreak Hill Half, offering the chance to do a 5K and 10K one day, and a half the next -- and to meet the magazine's staff -- I decided to give it a shot. (The 20-minute drive and the familiar course didn't hurt, either.)

To cut to the chase, I ran pretty well, with the exception of the last three miles of the half (not unexpectedly), and I enjoyed the experience, which was as much a festival as a series of races. I also learned a few things about racing more than once in a weekend.

Take it easy. The 5K came first, as it often does on a race festival weekend. I usually throw caution to the wind in a 5K -- at this point in my life, it's essentially a sprint for me -- but about a mile into this one, I knew I needed to hold back a bit if I wanted to make it to Sunday. I ran 20:06, which is quick for me without pushing it. (I ran my 5K PR when I was 17 and have accepted that I will never come close again.)

Study the course. Thanks to a friend, I knew the second half of the out-and-back 10K course had more hills. That, combined with the need to conserve energy, led me to take the first half of this race easy and push it a bit in the second half. It worked: Despite the hills, I ran negative splits. My 43:15 left me about 90 seconds short of a PR -- I ran my PR in an April race on a course that doesn't include Heartbreak Hill -- but this was still my best race of the weekend.

When in doubt, skip the fuel. I ate a granola bar about an hour or so before the 5K, which started 75 minutes before the 10K. Between races I ate nothing and drank a bottle of water. I saw folks who were running both races eating a bagel in between. My educated guess: They regretted it. Yes, 9.3 miles is a lot, but you shouldn't need to refuel if you run that distance -- and if you do, it shouldn't be a giant lump of carbohydrates, even if it's free. If you do need fuel, opt for a sports drink, gel or banana -- provided you’ve used that type of fuel before and know it doesn’t do funky things to your gastrointestinal system.

Look for shade. It was a good 10 degrees warmer on Sunday, and with more sun, than Saturday. Not a day for PRs. (Unless you're my aforementioned friend, who did it in the half AND the 10K -- and on the opening weekend of a community theater production of Hamlet. Clearly I'm an underachiever.) It was a day, though, to find the shade wherever I could out on the course and drink plenty of water (not to mention dump some on my head). My 1:33:12 half was several minutes off a PR, but, in a race that felt like a war of attrition, I was far from the only one to miss his or her best time.

Take it in stride. An event such as the Heartbreak Hill Half is less about racing and more about running -- pounding the pavement, meeting fellow runners and celebrating the sport we all know and love. You can't expect to excel at all the races of a festival weekend. Focus on one -- you can decide which one at the last minute, or even after you’ve started, as I did -- and use the others as faster-than-usual training runs with water stops and cheering crowds and tables of free food and drink at the end.

Pack extra clothes. You may not necessarily need to change after your first race of the day, but you most certainly will after the second. (I’m not sure, but I believe protocol allows you to wear the race shirt once you’ve collected your medal.) If you think you might change shirts, consider pinning your bib to your shorts (which you’re less likely to change, I imagine) so officials, volunteers and the like can verify that you did, in fact, run.

Complete more than one race in a weekend, and most of your friends and family will (continue to) think you are a little nuts. In the grand scheme of things, though, it’s not that difficult or painful -- certainly not in comparison to a marathon -- and the swag, the compliments and the sense of accomplishment make it all worth the effort. If you’re up for the challenge, you’re healthy and you’re willing, I say you give it a shot.

What I Learned From the Maine Coast Marathon

I signed up for the Maine Coast Marathon several months ago, knowing full well the race would be sandwiched between two weddings on opposite coasts. I figured I could pull it off pretty easily -- the trip to San Francisco was one week before the race, amid my taper, and the trip to Disney World three days after the race would offer a nice recovery opportunity. (For the uninitiated, a typical day at Disney requires several miles of walking.) 

For the most part, I did pull it off. I fell short of my lofty goal (a BQ of 3:05) and my more realistic goal (a PR under 3:13), but I ran the race I wanted, for the most part. I'd planned to run negative splits, starting with 7:20s and finishing with sub-6:50s en route to that BQ. This worked well -- that is, up until Mile 19 or so, when the sun, the heat and the pace starting to take their toll. (Any other year, 70-degree temperatures might have been bearable, but after training through the Polar Vortex, not so much.) 

My finishing time, 3:16:15, ranks as my third or fourth best. (I can't remember, really.) I'm still several minutes faster than I was at 21, which is great, and more than half an hour faster than my worst marathon, so I really can't complain. 

Of course, there's a lesson here. I concocted my negative split plan a whopping two weeks before race day. (Great idea, Beastwood.) This means I did none of my long runs as progression runs, which means I wasn't physically prepared to run faster deeper into the race. I thought I was, of course, having made easy work of my tempo runs, often exceeding my target paces by 15 seconds per mile. It takes more than two weeks -- and two weeks of taper at that -- to prepare yourself for a race strategy that you've never employed.

That said, I got the hard part of the marathon right: I started slowly, stayed that way and kept to my target paces for three-quarters of the race. Next time, I'll set less ambitious splits -- and, more importantly, I'll train for those negative splits from the beginning. Setting goals is important, after all, and now I have two clear-cut ones for training for marathon #11. Now, about that sunshine...

11 Ways Running Gets Easier As You Get Older

Last week, I wrote about 11 reasons running gets harder as you get older. I got quite a bit of feedback, much along the lines of “glad I’m not the only one.”

In that post, I also promised to follow up with ways running gets easier as you get older. I’ve been running since 15, so I’d like to think I’ve picked up a lesson or two -- or, in this case, 11, along the way. (Note: As before, these are completely unscientific, just anecdotal.)

1. You know your legs better. This is probably the most important point of all. You know the difference between “I can keep running” pain, “I need to slow down” pain, “I need to walk” pain and “I need to collapse on the side of the road” pain. This can’t prevent injuries entirely, but it can help keep them from getting serious. 
2. Your know your body better. This is different than the first point. When I was younger, I often pushed myself to the point of exhaustion. Sometimes it worked, but it often didn’t -- my high school team always seemed to peak in the middle of the season, not at the end. As I’ve aged, I’ve come to discover the difference between being genuinely fatigued (in which case I take a day off, or at the very least a nap) and simply tired (in which case I suck it up). 
3. You know yourself better. If 90 percent of baseball is half mental, I’d be willing to bet 90 percent of running is all mental. When you’re just getting started, you question yourself at every turn -- about the distance you’re running, the clothes you’re wearing, the goal you’re setting and so on. Over time, these doubts subside, and you’re increasingly able to trust your training -- and yourself. 
4. Passing people younger than you at the end of a race is far more embarrassing for the passee than when it's the other way around.
5. You’ve experienced disappointment, whether through running or life itself. By now, we’ve all bonked a race -- or an exam, job interview, first date, home improvement project, sales presentation or heaven knows what else. Needing to skip a workout or missing a race goal no longer induces panic. 
6. You know how to set goals. Scott Fishman suggests setting three goals before a race, paraphrased here as the ideal, nothing-goes-wrong goal, the realistic goal based on your fitness level and the everything-hurts-and-wait-is-that-snow? goal. I nodded many times as I read Fishman’s post. Anyone who’s been running for a while knows that roughly 10 million things can affect how you run on any given day, so setting a single (often lofty) goal is shortsighted and counter-intuitive. 
7. You really can eat whatever the heck you want. Within reason, of course; I embrace a pretty healthy diet. But the amount of food I consume in a single sitting, especially in the midst of marathon training, literally frightens the uninitiated. 
8. You can afford it. Yes, running is a relatively inexpensive sport, but to do it right -- with the proper shoes, clothes, watch and other equipment -- you do need to spend a bit more cold, hard cash than you likely had back when you drove a crappy car and lived in a crappy apartment with crappy roommates.  Plus, what’s the fun of running without racing every once in a while? 
9. You’ve accepted who you are. I am not a before-the-crack-of-dawn runner, so I’ve all but given up trying to wake up while it’s dark out to run. It took many years, and many failed attempts to run early in the morning, to realize this. I don’t plan for morning runs (unless I’m racing, of course) and therefore can’t feel bad about missing them. 
10. You can help others. As I get older, more friends take up running. Many have questions -- about shoes, pain, speed, racing and so on. Having been around the block, I can (and happily do) offer advice when and where appropriate. Really, it’s the least I can do. 
11. Above all, you’re not an idiot. Once, after a bad high school cross country race, I decided to punish myself and do my cooldown barefoot. That was pretty freakin’ dumb. 

Having outlined how running is both worse and better when you’re older, I’ve decided to take some time and think about an answer to the question that these two posts have sparked: Is running more fun when you’re younger or older?

11 Ways Running Gets Harder As You Get Older

On a recent run, as I learned the hard way that 90 minutes between eating and running apparently is no longer sufficient, I came to realize that running gets harder as you get older. Naturally, a few miles later, I felt fantastic and was convinced that running actually gets easier as you get older.

Both statements are true. Certain aspects of running improve with age; others, not so much. This post will focus on how (and why) running gets harder as you get older. I’ll cover the positive stuff in a subsequent post. (Note: None of this is actually scientific.)

1. You need rest. This comes in two forms: Sleep and days off. In my 20s, I could party into the wee hours of the morning, wake up a few hours later, and run a PR. You probably could, too. Now? Hangovers last two days. Forget it.
2. You need to stretch constantly. Did you stretch after every workout in high school? Didn’t think so. Now, if you don’t stretch before you get into bed, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to get out of it the next morning. In fact, you should probably be stretching right now.
3. Everything hurts. Even when you rest, stretch and foam roll, you’re sore. You can’t complain about it, either, because then everyone will just tell you to stop running.
4. You need more downtime. As a result of everything described above, I usually need at least one day off after a hard workout -- sometimes two days.Same goes for bouncing back from races.
5. Life gets in the way. You have a real job, real relationships, a home you actually care about keeping clean, a car that you don’t always want to smell like wet running shoes, pets, children, in-laws, school and 47 million other things to get in the way of training. This means running in the morning when you're tired, running at night when you're tired or running in the middle of the day when you're tired. Awesome.
6. Your GI system gets sensitive. Back in the day, I used to eat dinner and run 45 minutes later. That was fun. Now my body apparently needs two hours to process a banana and some yogurt.
7. You have to watch what you eat. Sure, publicly we brag about eating “whatever we want,” but privately we carefully measure out portions of proteins, carbs, fat and water so we don’t gain or lose too much weight. It’s a far cry from literally eating whatever we wanted while we ran in high school and college.
8. You have to pee more. Didn’t wait in those pre-race PortaPotty lines in the halcyon days of your youth, did you? And just reading about having to pee made you have to pee, didn’t it?
9. It’s more complicated. I started running in 1995. It took six years for me to even buy a watch. Now I wear a GPS-enabled watch that tracks distance, pace and time and input that data to a website that lets me track every workout. Oh, and then there are the shoes….
10. It’s too hot. Now it’s too cold. Sensitivity to temperature only increases as you age. The days of wearing only shorts and a long-sleeve T-shirt on a 30-degree day are long gone.
11. You never have leftovers. After running for more than 18 years, I need such ridiculous amounts of food to fuel my metabolism that I never get a doggie bag from restaurants, I need to cook for four if I want leftovers at dinner, and friends and family gawk whenever I eat.

I’m sure there are more than 11 ways running gets harder as you get older, but these are the ones that came to mind immediately. What did I miss?

Running in the Dark: Another Cautionary Tale

When you get down to it, you try to avoid two things when running in the dark: Falling down and getting hit by a car. (Yes, you try to avoid these things running in sunlight, too, but darkness magnifies the difficulty of the tasks.)

Earlier this winter, I offered a cautionary tale about what can happen on even your most familiar running routes. I let my guard down for a second, and I fell down.

Getting hit by a car also happens when you, or the driver of the car, let your guard down for a second. Obviously, you should pay attention at every intersection and street crossing, erring on the side of caution. Most people are lousy drivers, after all.

Now, you can't control how other people will drive, but you can control how you appear to them. One way to make sure drivers see you is to dress like this:

I hit most of the colors of the rainbow here: Red shoes, blue hat, green shirt, yellow vest, black tights and pasty white skin. And this doesn't even include my headlamp, which I put on after snapping this pic when I realized how dark it was outside.

Do I have any evidence that, had I dressed otherwise, a car would have hit me? No. But I imagine I was pretty hard to miss.

Don't Be Afraid to Run Naked (At the Wrist, That Is)

At my day job, covering technology, there’s a lot of talk about fitness apps and fitness gadgets and wearable tech and, in the context of healthcare, the quantified self. (Full disclosure: I contributed to the hype by creating a list of tech for the athletes on your Christmas list. To further prove I am a sellout, I made it a slideshow, too.)

There’s definitely value in tracking all this data. When you’re training, you need to make sure you’re hitting the right pace and distance -- and, frankly, it’s much easier to log that information and study it later if it comes from a fancy watch or smartphone. (Full disclosure, again, which makes sense since I put "naked" in the headline: I track my runs using dailymile.)

However, there’s also a downside to having so much data. It’s easy to fret over, especially when targets are missed. It doesn’t take into account that, say, your tempo run in 22-degree weather on snow- and ice-covered sidewalks couldn’t possibly happen at goal pace (as has been the case so often this winter). It’s not just times, too; steps taken in a day, miles run in a month, weight lost (or gained) or other numbers can quickly become obsessions -- and the problem can be further exacerbated when all this information gets shared on social media sites.

I fully recognize the benefit to aggregating and sharing this information. If you've started, and especially if you've started as a means of motivation, there's no point in returning to the 20th century and "guessing" how far, fast and long you've run.

Every once in a while, though, it pays to unplug. On an easy day, the watch stays home. On the first few runs after my post-marathon rest, the watch stays home. On days when the weather's terrible, and pace goals go out the window, the watch stays home (or freezes). On a rushed race day, the watch (often accidentally) stays home.

Running unplugged offers a few benefits. It helps to run "by feel," without constantly staring at your watch. It prepares you for situations when your watch fails you. It lets you clear your head, since you're not focusing on every little detail of your run. It lets you enjoy the scenery. It lets you return to your roots, to the freedom of running around your backyard or park for hours as a child, and appreciate our sport even more.

It certainly isn't easy. Like any routine, running with a watch is a hard habit to break. But if you have an easy run in your future, it might be worth leaving the watch behind and just seeing what happens.

Who knows? It just might be the start of a new routine.

It's Not Where You Start, It's Where You Finish

Near the beginning of the Super Sunday 5, during the period when everyone is either heading to the start line or waiting for a vacant bathroom, the race announcer said something over the loudspeaker that, in my years of racing, I’ve never heard before. 

As everyone staked a claim to a small patch of asphalt that, for the next few minutes, would belong to nobody else, the announcer made the usual remark that slower runners should move farther back. Then, to assuage everyone’s fears, he added, “The race isn’t won in the first 100 meters.” 

For someone with a nasty habit of starting races like a bat out of hell, this stuck with me -- especially since, as the crowd gathered, the blue-and-orange START banner seemed to get farther and farther away. 

I lamented about getting boxed in at the start several months ago, in my James Joyce Ramble recap. Back then, I chalked it up to a lack of confidence; I’d bonked badly in a marathon a few months before and remained on the proverbial comeback trail. 

This weekend, though, I directed my ire toward the runners gathering around me. Perhaps I was jealous that they’d located their friends and exchanged pleasantries while I stared ahead in solitude. Perhaps I was a bit chilly. Perhaps their perfectly matching outfits turned me off. Whatever it was, I wanted them gone -- even though, like me, they’d paid to run a race with the express mission of raising money to kick cancer’s ass. 

My ire continued after the gun, when the murderous, thieving horde of peasants refused to part like the Red Sea so I could get to the front of the pack. And it continued when I passed the 1-mile mark about 20 seconds slower than my goal pace, even after adjusting for the gun vs. chip time split. (I also left my watch at home. That may have contributed to my mood.) 

Then a funny thing happened: I got stronger. I wasn’t gassed from an unnecessarily fast start. The gradual hills that lead into Harvard Square didn’t bother me. I didn’t start losing ground to folks who had started even farther back. I actually maintained a constant pace for the duration of the race and finished with the same 5-mile time I ran back in April on a flatter course. 

Sure, I didn’t PR, but I’ve accepted that I can’t PR all the time. (I ran a sub-30 minute 5-miler back in college. That’s never happening again.) I also learned that, sure enough, you don’t win a 5-mile race in the first 100 meters. Finally, I was reminded that it really doesn’t matter where you start but, rather, where you finish.