Value of a downhill half

I don't recommend hammering. If you can get away with it I'd run just hard enough to win and compete in trainers.

I personally think racing this will do more harm than good regardless of how you run it.

It sounds like I may be underestimating how hard on the quads a downhill race is. Ultimately this race is about 100 feet of downhill per a mile, I guess it would be better training for Boston?

Hmm, what half marathon is this? I've never heard of so much elevation loss in 13 miles for road race HM? Sounds like Montana or Idaho, unless it's a trail HM let us know if you don't mind sharing

downhill half wrote:

Interested in hearing others thoughts on this.

I live at altitude and am training for a marathon. My local half is 4 weeks prior to my goal Marathon at sea level. Here's the catch- the race has a net loss of 1400 feet.

Before everyone goes off about downhill courses not counting as times, I completely agree, they just offer some prize money I might sneak into and I would like to run in a race atmosphere.

My question is two fold: 1. Is the extra muscle damage caused by the downhill beneficial to being able to handle the full race distance in a month? and 2. would it cause a detriment to race day?

Interested in hearing others' thoughts on this.

This is the Loveland Marathon/ half marathon in CO. Starts in Estes Park, then runs into Loveland. Here is the course map:

http://lovelandmarathon.com/38-2/

It seems like half of all half marathons in CO are downhill these days...

I was going to guess the cottonwood canyon half in Utah.

this disease of downhill racing and psuedo PR's is becoming national. holiday half marathon san diego, revel canyon city, mountains 2 beaches, st george...

A little over 100 feet per mile average is not all that much. If the downhill is reasonably well spread out throughout the course and not concentrated into one or two killer descents, I think you should be fine to go for it. It may tax your muscles in ways that are slightly different from what you're used to, but I don't see that it should be a big problem.

amkelley wrote:

A little over 100 feet per mile average is not all that much. If the downhill is reasonably well spread out throughout the course and not concentrated into one or two killer descents, I think you should be fine to go for it. It may tax your muscles in ways that are slightly different from what you're used to, but I don't see that it should be a big problem.

I agree - it's not that steep. When I used to pretend to be a long distance runner (before I realised I was better off sprinting...), I did a lot of long runs from my house (200m above sea level) to sea level. It was about 3.5km from my house to the shore, so that section was much steeper than what the OP is talking about (57m per km compared with the OP's 19m per km) - at the same time it wasn't steep enough to feel like I had to limit my speed.

I think much of the time you (the OP) will hardly notice you're running downhill, so I wouldn't worry about muscle damage. Just treat it as a chance to have some competition.

true dat! there's a downhill marathon course in washington state now used by not one but three fulls!!

Thanks for this input. It sounds like not too much of a consensus, so it really comes down to how well I think I can recover in this situation. I still have a few weeks to decide.

I would probably not run this race flat out. I don't think the decline is so bad that it will necessarily kill you, but it adds an element of risk. Unless you've done stuff like this before, you don't know how you'll react. And at four weeks out, while you do have enough time to recover, you don't NECESSARILY have enough time to recover and get another hard race-pace workout done with time to recover again before the marathon. You can probably do it, but it's not a sure thing. That said, you know your body better than I do.

BTW, the Fontana Half Marathon drops 2,125 feet. You could ride a soapbox derby car the whole way:

http://www.halfmarathons.net/course-map-fontana-days-run-half-marathon/

downhill half wrote:

It seems like half of all half marathons in CO are downhill these days...

Tell that to the mountain I ran up two weeks ago :P

You can BQ on a course with a crazy net downhill like that?