Race #21- Running on H I L L S

Race #21 – The Jacobus 5-Miler, the 6th of 8 races in the YRRC Winter Race Series

The Cause – The York Road Runners Club, York, PA

Running well on hills requires several key strategies, all of which work well in tackling any big goal. The first, and most important, of course, is a positive attitude.
Amby Burfoot

Runners have a love-hate relationship with hills. We know that hill training strengthens us, but we often hate doing it. Call it a necessary evil.

But when hills are built into races, we have no choice but to dig down deep and run them harder than we would in training.

And holy moly, today’s race was 5 miles of nearly-constant hills: a massive downhill at the beginning, rolling hills throughout, then the massive uphill back to the finish.

Exhibit A: Just one of the hills in today’s Jacobus 5-Miler

Another hill–but gorgeous scenery past Lake Redman

The YRRC’s Winter Race Series is an amazing 8-race series with mostly 5-milers and 10k’s of varied terrain. Today’s 5-miler was super challenging yet super special.

Jacobus is a tiny town but they rolled out the red carpet for us runners today. Check out the welcome sign on the church, where we started and ended. 🙂

Not only did they wish us “Godspeed,” but the church welcomed us for breakfast afterwards. There, I had the chance to chat with the series director Heather. I asked if the club actually makes money on all of our winter race fees and she said they did. All the money goes back into the club, which re-enriches the running community. What a great cycle.

Another component of the series is the overall points race. We are getting down to the wire, with two races left in the series. And I’m getting competitive. Which is why I ran the hills a bit harder today than I might have otherwise. Going into the race, I was in 5th place in my age group. Today, the original results showed me finishing 4th in my age group but I guess a revision was in order and I actually finished 5th. Overall points will come out in another day or two but it looks like I will move into a tie for 4th place in the series overall. I certainly want to finish strong.

Once again, I feel blessed to have a fun group of run friends to share these Saturday mornings with. We carpooled, laughed, ran, cursed the hills, enjoyed breakfast, laughed some more, and carpooled home again.

I know that today’s hilly course will serve me well when I hit a few flat courses planned in my March race calendar. But today it burned a bit. Love/hate. 🙂