Hill training sucks less on Block Island

After doing it to train for my previous five marathons, I still do not enjoy hill training. At all.

But I know that it is beneficial, so I continue to do it every third week, running up and down a 1/3- to 1/2-mile hill - two uphill sprints followed by one downhill sprint and repeating to total anywhere from three to seven sprints. It is crushing work.

Running up and down High Street on Block Island, though, made it a little better. In fact, the Hal Higdon Advanced training program called for six sprints (four up, two down) and I actually decided to do one extra up.

That is the power of vacation running. You will probably not see me doing that at home.