hill runs a week with a combination of lactate threshold training and moderately hilly to flat runs at about 55% of maximum heart rate The severe pounding caused by repeated downhill running not only deadens the legs butalso leads to injury. Be careful with

your hilly runs! Mark Conover was an Olympic marathoner and is currently a coach at CalPoly in San Luis Obispo; he coaches via the Internet.

THE BENEFITS of training are specific—training on mountainous terrain prepares you well for racing on mountainous terrain, doing quarters on the track will help your mile times, and so on. Although I know of no evidence that your friend is right, I suspect heis, because getting on more moderate inclines is likely to better simulate what you will face in your marathons—conquerable terrain where pace matters and where your formisn’t significantly compromised. I lived for a year in a section of Connecticut where massive hills onadaily basis were unavoidable. Friends who would visit would voice envy during our runs about how “strong” the topography must be making me. Perhaps, but it also made me slow. That

is, [became pretty good at running up and down severe hills, but I became worse at running quickly over the flatter terrain that most races feature.

Scott Douglas is M&B’s “On The Road” columnist and former editor of Running Times.

MY SUGGESTION would be to incorporate some flat speed work into your program. Repetition miles, halves, even quarters would help you develop the quick leg turnover that running up the sides of mountains takes away. Seeing how easily you can run sub-8:00 miles with the strength that running up mountains has already provided would give you the confidence that you can string 26 of them together in upcoming marathons. Jim Whiting, former editor of Northwest Running, has

been an active runner most of his life and in 1998 ran his first marathon—in Greece.

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July/August 1999

About THE Authors

MICHAEL DUNCAN has beenrunning for 36 years. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and works for the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner. After years of racing at all distances, he has found the greatest satisfaction in training for and racing ultras. In the past Michael has won numerous marathons, including the Athens Marathon and the Humboldt Redwoods Marathon. He boasts personal records of 6:30:30 for 50 miles, 2:25:24 for a marathon, 30:59 for 10K, and 4:27.5 for the mile. At age 49, he set a PR for 50K of 3:35:15.

MARY TROTTO, EdD, PT, is a tenured faculty member at Long Island Univeristy/C.W. Post campus. In addition to teaching in the Department of Health, Physical Education, and Movement Science, she is also the department’s chair and a physical therapist. While teaching is her first passion, running comes in a strong second. Mary recently competed at the National Indoor Championships in the pentathalon. She has also run marathons and ultras, competed in biathlons and triathlons, and once raced up the Empire State Building.

ANDY YELENAK, this issue’s cover artist, has been a runner since 1974 and a freelance illustrator since 1981. In 1994 he decided to paint what he loved and create artwork with running as the subject. Fascinated and inspired by running history, Andy has tried to capture some of the sport’s wonderful moments with his work. Andy’s limited edition lithograph adorning our cover is called “Billy’s Breakthrough,” and commemorates Bill Rodgers’s first marathon victory at Boston in 1975, a moment Rodgers calls “the highlight of my running career.” Andy’s paintings have been exhibited at the Society of Illustrators in New York and at the Beckett Sports Art Gallery in Dallas.

JOE PRUSAITIS of Austin, Texas, lives with his wife Joyce and their two teenage girls; he is King of Stress Management, Used Clothing Purification, and Extreme Patience. He works as an engineer for Motorola, where he is a Master Juggler and Worker of Minor Miracles. He volunteers as a race director for the Motorola Austin Marathon, where he is the Chancellor of Chaos and official Dean of Detail. In between, he runs just to get away, and he likes to run for a long time. In the last two-plus years, he has run seven 100-mile races, including his favorite, Wasatch. Joyce joins him on most of his adventures.

JOE OAKES jg running out of challenges. In 1990 Joe began an often-interrupted multi-sport-aroundthe-world adventure using bicycling, running, swimming, kayaking, sailing, walking, and climbing. He began in Fairbanks, Alaska, and headed for New York; then he sailed to Portugal; ran, walked, and bicycled through Europe, Russia, Central Asia; and swam across the Bering Straits to Alaska. In March of 1997 Joe chopped off another 400 miles of his journey on a dog sled, traveling the

the Yukon between Fairbanks and Kaltag.

MEL BLOOM was a Hollywood literary agent for 30 years representing some of filmdom’s most soughtafter writers. After three decades in the business, Mel felt he had learned enough about screenplay writing to giveita shot. Though he has had several things optioned by Hollywood, not one has seen the light of production. Mel has, however, had two plays produced and two books published. He has written articles for numerous publications, including The Reader’s Digest, Los Angeles, and The Times of London. His son, of whom he writes in his article, successfully completed his first Western States 100 in 1998.