Over the Hills and Far Away

We spent the last weekend in Halifax, and I got in runs of 6+ miles on both Friday and Saturday, and an 18 mile long run on Sunday morning. The long run took me from one end of Halifax to another and back, going down to the Armdale Rotary, up Chebucto Road and Quinpool Road, around the Commons and Citadel Hill a couple of times, and back to where I started. There were a few hills thrown in there. Check out this graph comparing the elevation profile on this long run to my typical long run I did last summer around downtown Fredericton.

I found the last couple of miles to be tough. It looks like I'm still in the process of building my endurance.

There were a couple of big races in Halifax over the weekend also, including the MacPass Mile and the Natal Day 6-mile race, but I passed on them both, and simply completed the long run. Maybe next year ...

Last summer during my marathon training, I intentionally tried to find flatter routes to run on. It was bad enough that I was expected to run ludicrous numbers of miles each week, I didn't need the added burden of hills. This year, I try to incorporate hills in most of my runs. Here is the profile from my run tonight - even hillier than my normal route.


Is this helping? I'm not entirely sure. I do have more confidence on the hills these days, but the real test will be in a race environment.

Speaking of races, I'll be doing the half-marathon in Saint John this weekend as part of Marathon by the Sea. I was supposed to run it last year (held about 7 weeks later in the year than this year's version) but I was hurt, and the organizers were nice enough to grant me a deferred entry this year. I checked out the elevation profile, and it doesn't look too bad, but I can't imagine any race in Saint John being very flat.

Here is an interesting story from the Globe and Mail yesterday, about how schools in Quebec base 50% of a physical education grade on a heart rate test. It would be interesting to do follow up studies 5/10/15 years out comparing the health of these people to those in other jurisdictions. If people are "forced" when younger to become fit, will it influence them to carry on the pattern as they age?

Wrap up for July: 200 miles logged, with two of the weeks over 50 miles. I'm guessing August will end up with me logging 50+ miles in every week but one. Continuing to bank the miles, hopefully the results will start to appear.