Not just a clever name: the Dreaded Druid Hills 10K

This is someone's elevation chart from DDH '09. Looks about right to me!

Greetings from the night before preaching, in which I am procrastinating writing with more writing. Tomorrow's sermon is proving to be a challenge to write, which seems appropriate as I started the day with a very challenging race: the Dreaded Druid Hills 10K.

I never heard of "DDH" before this year, but it is apparently an annual institution for hardcore Baltimore runners. The idea is simple: the officials map out the hilliest possible course through Baltimore's notoriously hilly Druid Hill park. Then, as an added bonus, they hold the race at a time of year when it can easily be 90 degrees with 100% humidity. I signed up for this race as soon as I heard about it, partially out of an addiction to challenge (thanks, Bryn Mawr and Yale!) and partially because I enjoy the "misery loves company" camaraderie of especially difficult races.

As the race grew closer, though, I started to question the wisdom of my decision. I kept thinking back to the last deliberately hard race I ran: the Riley's Rumble Half Marathon , otherwise known as the longest three hours of my life. That race started out as challenging and rapidly descended to borderline-impossible. It came fairly early in last year's marathon training and did nothing to build my confidence. Given that my 2011 marathon training starts this week, I was worried about  having a similarly demoralizing race.

Thankfully, DDH was just hard enough to live up to its name, but just do-able enough to still be fun. I met my friends Erin and Amir before the race, and we were joined by a friend of theirs who happened to be a DDH veteran. She explained that the course would start out flat, then transition to a few rolling hills before we hit the "real hills" beginning in mile 2. She warned us not to feel smug when we got over the rolling hills because they would be just a warmup. Her final words of wisdom were "When you hit the real hills, you'll know."

Over the course of the race, I lost track of how many times I mentally thanked Erin and Amir's friend for that advice. The first of the rolling hills was pretty serious, but I took it easy and mentally shook it off, knowing that the real challenge would come later. As promised, I knew when we hit the big hills. I lost count, but I'm told there were 7, and they were all a wicked combination of steep and loooong. These were the kind of hills where you huff and puff up and around a corner, only to look ahead and see runners winding upward for another half a mile. Each was followed by an equally steep downhill. Some racers used the downhills as a way to make up speed and pass people. I focused on bringing down my heart rate, calming my breathing, and not tumbling end-over-end.

I had no time goal in mind for this race, but I did hope to finish it without walking. Sadly, that goal proved unattainable. I walked three separate times, though only the first time was intentional. On what felt like the longest hill, from midway through mile 2 into mile 3, I reached a point where my heart was just going too fast and my breakfast was threatening to jump ship. At that point, I chose to walk to the top and start running again on the downhill. I reached similar spots twice more and found myself slowing to a walk without any conscious decision. The whole time, I was continuously thanking God for the relatively mild day. A few more degrees might have equaled a lot more walking.

The good news is that, despite these walk breaks, I still finished in 1:05, which is only 4 minutes off last week's PR time of 1:01. To me, this says that I need to set a loftier PR goal. If I can run 1:05 on the DDH course, I can certainly come in under an hour on a normal course.

All in all, this was a fun race and one I would recommend for more experienced runners. It certainly made the Rt. 450 hill, which our marathon group loves to hate, look like a piece of cake!