Marathoning for Marriage

Let’s get this out on the front end…I hate hills! I hated them when I was a cyclist and I hate them worse as a runner. They are usually not a big factor to us since we live in flat central Indiana. However, the Mad Marathon that we are training for has a lot of hills and climbs. To train for this, we have been driving an hour south of us to Sweetwater-Cordry Lakes area to run some crazy hills. I’m not exaggerating CRAZY – two hills are 12% and 16% grades!

I’m glad that we are doing these runs because we have had to consider and deal with issues that we hadn’t on our previous train runs on the flats. Things like altering technique for running uphill (smaller steps, slowing down) have improved immensely.

However, we have run into a major issue and still have not been able to resolve it. We are both struggling with the DOWNHILL portion of the hills. While we are not speed demons up the hill, we are generally doing ok. However, we both suffer from excruciating knee pain coming downhill. I have tried taking both shorter and longer strides, running more upright vs running with more of a lean – all to no avail. And it doesn’t matter if it is a gradual or a steep downhill. It was so bad during my 23 mile run that I had to come to a complete stop twice coming down the hill. I popped so many Advil during the run that a doctor would have yelled at me!

The roads that we are running on are very curvy as well as steep and the road itself has a high “crown” in the center for water drainage. This means that if you are running near the shoulder of the road, you are running at a strange angle with the right leg significantly higher than the left. I have even tried running in the center of the road when there are no cars – this has helped some but not much.

And unfortunately, the knee pain hasn’t always subsided in the days after the run. Now my short runs are even painful…

I’m trying out a knee band now and it seems to help some but I would be grateful for any suggestions on both the techniques of running hills and also dealing with knee pain….