One of the hardest things about racing far away from home is that you can't train on the course. Now, my next race is in Santa Barbara. And we're not in Santa Barbara. We're in Toronto, Canada, where it's a lot colder and a lot less hilly. Every single one of my runs is done on a super flat surface on the lake shore in Toronto. And so, I can't really train and prepare for this course. So, we came to the Marathon Handbook Secret layer somewhere in the greater Toronto area or slightly beyond and we're going to do a workout on the Wahoo Kicker run that actually helps us simulate those hills so that we can do a proper pre-race workout. And to give myself a little bit confidence that I'm ready for this course, I need shoes. Michael, go with this one. AS6 Mega Blast racing the Santa Barbara Half Marathon this fall was not in the plans. It started off as a media trip with Hoka. And the idea was to get us who weren't supposed to be highle distance runners to learn how to train and then come back to Santa Barbara in November and do the half marathon. And I looked at results in previous years and it's usually pretty fast. There's usually this 67 minute guy or 68 minute guy and I thought, you know what, no problem. I can run 65. This will be a walk in the park. And then I looked at the course profile. There's a reason no one has run faster than 6654 on that course. It's a really hilly course. There are two massive hills. They're about each 120 ft give or take up and down. on. One is at mile two. The other one, this is a really scary one, is at mile 10. The goal I've been telling people is that I want to win this race, but deep down I have a bigger goal. And the goal is to break the record. But before actually committing to that, I need to try out this course. Today, the workout is basically that I'm doing an easy warm-up jog on the first part of the course. We're simulating this course here. And then once I get to the hills, I'm going to pick it up. The first hill is a mile and a half up, a mile and a half down, and then the second hill is one mile up, one mile down. So, we're going to do those parts hard to see if I actually can hold pace and try to get ready for this race in a week. So, I took the first few miles of the course to warm up because the two first miles are pretty flat. And the goal is to hit the hills as fast as I want to hit them on race day. And then secondarily, try to figure out what the pace should be as I go up and down these hills. Here's my problem. I've run two big half marathons and both of them were completely flat. So, the goal was always just to lock into pace from start to finish. Whereas here, my goal going into this race has roughly been to like keep the same pace while knowing that it'll probably get a bit slower as I go up the hill, then a bit faster as I go down. But I don't know by how much. So, what I'm going to do is just simulate the effort and see where that lands me pace per mile-wise and then and then use that to inform my race strategy, I guess. So, we'll do that for the first one and then try to stay alive and then do the same thing later on in the course. So, here we go. So, I'm parking it at 308 per kilometer, 505 per mile. That's what I need to break the record. So, let's see how hard this first hill is. Oh. Oh, God. Okay. All right. We're going down. All right. All right. I feel like I got to get the pace faster cuz I'm stumbling off the treadmill. Okay. Jeez, it's like Okay, I'm hitting four. Holy. This is a hill. I'm hitting like 450s right now. And I'm not even working. This feels so much easier than going up. Wow. Okay. Any thought I had that I'd even split this hill was completely ridiculous. We had a 505 working super hard. And now it was like four 448s 445s and just cruising. Yep. So I think going into the race now I'll have enough confidence not to worry about my pace going uphill because I'll make it up on the down. I think this like 505 pace going up that hill was too hard. It felt too hard for the start of a half marathon. So, I think I'm going to have to readjust the strategy. Even if I hit like 515s going up that first hill, I'll make it up on the down. That's good to know. Also, running downhill on a treadmill feels so weird. I'm not used to it. I've done uphill runs on a treadmill, but this is wild. And then the lateral tilt adds to it because every now and then I feel like I'm tilting a bit to the left. Kind of like I guess the road is going to be. Okay, we're 11 miles in. The sun's starting to set and I feel pretty rested from the first hill because there is a good amount of easy running between the two. But now that we're getting to hill two, I'm going to change my goal here a little bit. I'm going to try to keep my effort level constant as opposed to my pace. So that means going up in about 510s, 515s feels totally fine and then just let myself naturally go faster as the treadmill tilts towards the downhill. Oh, all right. Just as I'm saying this, we're starting to go up. So, you're going to pick it up. This is where I think people make their move. So, I'm guessing that during the actual race, this is really going to hurt. So, effort's important. Let's think about effort. At this point, I kind of feel like some weird like fatigue in my hips cuz I feel like I've I've laterally tilted a little bit throughout this time, which again kind of weird, kind of cool. It's kind of like doing an actual road race. So, I'm actually embracing this because this is likely somewhat like how I'm going to feel on the actual race day. My god, this is a long hill. They say it's just a mile, but I think it's closer to a mile and a half. It's a long time to be climbing. I'm about halfway. Oh my god. Okay, here we are. Top of this freaking hill. Hey. All right, we got it. Okay. Okay. On race day, then it's a one and a half mile downhill towards the finish, which if I have any energy left, I hammer. This was not the best looking workout of my build, but it might have been the most useful one because now I know how to tackle this course. I think had I not done this, I would have gone out too hard. I would have gotten greedy. I would have worried about pace too much on that first hill and then risk toppling over that threshold edge and getting way too tired for the rest of the race. Now I know what to do and I think I think that like that I get this course record 66 54 will be history by next week. I'm calling it. And if it doesn't happen, you can edit this out. Alice on 631. Ah, Canada, why can't you be a little bit warmer?