Jim in SJ wrote:
If you ran a good time there I believe you earned it. When I looked at course profile on the Web I was licking my chops but after 17 miles of racing on it at 7 mpm my legs were trash....Admittedly I didn't do much at all in the way of long training runs on hills, which probably was my undoing, but there is still there is no way I'd call CIM an aided course.
The thing about hill running, particularly downhill running, is all it takes is one hill session of 'beating up' the legs (~downhill, aka eccentric loading, is more stressful) to adjust/adapt to hill running. I've seen it mentioned on here that training on a treadmill is useful if you don't have an abundance of long climbs/downhills where you live.