Mike's Marathon Blog

I stole this from Wikipedia:

The Boston Marathon course runs through 26.22 miles of winding roads into the center of Boston, where the official finish line is located at Copley Square. The Boston Marathon is considered to be one of the more difficult marathon courses because of the Newton hills, which culminate in Heartbreak Hill near Boston College. While the three hills on Comm Ave are better known, a preceding hill on Washington Street, climbing from the Charles River crossing at 16 miles, is regarded by Dave McGillivray, the 2007 race director, as the course’s most difficult challenge. This hill, which follows a 150 foot drop over the course of one half-mile, forces many lesser-trained runners to a walking pace.

Heartbreak Hill is an ascent over 0.4 mile of the course, between the 20 and 21 mile marks, in the vicinity of BC. It is the last of four “Newton hills”, which begin at the 16 mile mark. The Newton hills confound contestants (out of proportion to their modest elevation gain) by forcing a late climb after the downhill trend of the race to that point. Heartbreak Hill itself rises only 88 vertical feet, but is positioned at a point on the course where muscle stores are likely to be depleted—a phenomenon referred to by marathoners as “hitting the wall.”

The nickname “Heartbreak Hill” originated with an event in the 1936 race. On this stretch, defending champion John Kelley caught race leader Ellison “Tarzan” Brown, giving Brown a consolatory pat on the shoulder as he passed. His competitive drive apparently stoked by this gesture, Tarzan Brown rallied, pulled away from Kelley, and went on to win—in the words of Boston Globe reporter Jerry Nason, “breaking Kelley’s heart.”

Saturday was one of the best runs I have ever had. The weather was perfect (for New England of course) and my legs were well rested. This was my 2nd team run that I was the last person standing. Along with one of the team coaches, I ran 15 miles through the Newton hills, up Heartbreak Hill and back. We talked the entire time. It was great. He told me a lot about the race, things to expect and shared many of his ‘war’ stories. I didn’t even turn on my iPod!

We stopped for a few minutes at the top of Heartbreak Hill. There are many runners along the entire marathon route and Heartbreak Hill is always the most crowded section. People even park their cars at the bottom, run up and run straight back to their cars. It’s not the steepest or longest hill you will come across, but at mile 20 of the marathon, it mine as well be Everest. I did it after running 7 miles and it was tough. The unfortunate part, which luckily I won’t need to do on race day, is running down. If your quads weren’t burning before, well they’re burning now!

At the bottom, my coach told me that the route we run on Saturdays is much more difficult than the actual marathon. Simply because we run the Newton hills twice. Our weekend runs also end with the hill on Washington Street in Wellesley. This is the hill mentioned in the Wikipedia posting (a preceding hill on Washington Street, climbing from the Charles River crossing at 16 miles, is regarded by Dave McGillivray, the 2007 race director, as the course’s most difficult challenge). At the start of our runs, just like it will be on race day, we run down this particular hill. Dave McGillivray calls this the most difficult hill on the course and it’s downhill! Unfortunately, we need to run up this hill on Saturdays. This hill makes Heartbreak Hill look like a speed bump. It’s literally longer and steeper (twice as steep) than Heartbreak. This past Saturday, we reached this hill at mile 13. I just ran a half-marathon and now I have to run up this frigin cliff! Three weeks ago, I hurt my knee on this hill. This weekend, I hurt my hip. Heartbreak Hill has a nickname. This hill should be called Kneebreak Hill or Pleasedontmakemerunupthishill Hill.