Reading the Course, Racing the Hills

Full Transcript

Reading the Course, Racing the Hills

Cold Open

Here’s something strange I found in twenty six years of state meet results.

Every fall, the New Hampshire divisional championships are run at Derryfield Park in Manchester. Same park, every year. And when you follow the runners who race it two years in a row, they almost always get faster the second time. Ten seconds, twenty seconds, forty five. That’s what happens when teenagers train for another year. They improve.

Almost always. There’s one pair of seasons where it flips.

The kids who raced Derryfield in 2022 and then again in 2023 ran slower the second time. Same kids, a year older, a year stronger. Slower.

The kids didn’t change. The course did. In 2023 the route at Derryfield changed. It’s a little bit longer now. It’s a little bit harder. And it runs slightly slower. From 2023 through 2025, the middle boy in those championship races ran close to a minute slower than the long run average. The middle girl, about a minute and a half.

Now think about what that does to a kid who doesn’t know it. She runs a great race on that course, looks at the clock, and decides she had a bad day.

That’s this episode. Times belong to the course, and championship courses reward the runners who learn to read them.

Intro

Welcome back to Salty Talks. I’m Coach Saltmarsh. Twenty five years coaching, thirty one state champions, and more course walks than I can count, most of them in the rain.

So today: how to read a cross country course, where to spend and where to save on the hills, and why Derryfield finds out who really did the work.

Every course tells you how it wants to be raced. Where it narrows, where it climbs, where the footing goes bad, where the last four hundred turns. The information is all right there, and most teams show up, jog a loop of it in the warmup, and race it blind.

Today we’re going to fix that. Let’s go.

Segment One · Times Belong to Courses

Start with the thing that took me too long to learn as a young coach. A 5K time without a course attached to it is just a number.

Two 5K courses can run three minutes apart because of the hills, the footing, and the weather. Same distance on paper. Completely different races.

So the first thing I teach athletes and parents is to compare a runner to her own last race on the same course. Not to a PR from a flat invitational. Not to a friend’s time from a different meet. Same course, last time. That’s the only comparison that means much.

And as Derryfield proved, even the same park can change on you. When the route changed in 2023, every time on the old course turned into history instead of a target. If your runner is racing Derryfield now, the yardstick is the current course. Last fall, across the three divisional races, the middle boy ran 19:58 and the middle girl ran 24:34.

There’s a full breakdown of those times on the site, twenty six seasons of them, if you want to see it for yourself.

But here’s why this matters. It matters for racing, not just for parents. A runner who’s chasing a time on a hard course races the clock instead of the course. She sees a slow mile split, panics, and starts pressing on a hill that’s designed to punish people who press.

Take the clock out of it. On a championship course, you’re racing places, and you’re racing over the ground to get to the finish line first, regardless of time.

Segment Two · How to Read a Race Course

Here’s how we read a race course. Ideally, you walk it or jog it with the team. If you can’t get there, study the course map. See if there’s any course video. Check out satellite images. Something. Never race a championship course blind.

Five things I want every runner to know before she toes the line.

One. The first turn. That’s where position matters most. How far is it from the starting line? Does it go left or right? Where does it narrow? A course that funnels at six hundred meters changes how hard you have to go out.

Two. You need to know where every major hill is. Where does it start? How long does it run? And this is the one that a lot of people miss: what’s at the top? Does it flatten out? Does it turn? Does it drop right away? The top of the hill is where the race happens, so you need to know what the top looks like.

Three. The footing. Grass, dirt, gravel, roots, mud. Where it goes bad, the good line is usually narrow, and you want to know where it is before two hundred kids are fighting over it.

Four. Where you’ll be when it really hurts. Find two and a half miles on the course. That’s the crucible. That’s the stretch we talked about in the race strategy episode. What’s there? A climb? A long straight where you can watch the leaders run away from you? Know it before you feel it.

Five. The last four hundred meters of the race. Is it straight? Is it a turn? Does it finish uphill? Is it downhill into a chute? You plan the last eight hundred meters of the race based on every one of these answers.

If you can’t walk the whole course, use the warmup. Most teams jog somewhere random. Jog the start and the first turn, and then walk out from the finish line along the last four hundred. Stand at the starting line and look out to see what you’re up against. Those are the two places where course knowledge buys the most, and you can see both before the gun goes off.

Here’s a test I like. After the course walk, ask each runner to describe the course in three sentences. If she can’t, she hasn’t read it yet.

And coaches, read it for yourself too. Pick out spots in advance. Where are you going to be? Where do they need you most? Two and a half miles is where your voice matters, so try to be standing there if possible.

Segment Three · Uphill: Spend Effort, Not Pace

Let’s talk about hills. Most runners attack the hill. They pass people on the way up, and they feel fantastic about it for about forty meters past the top. And then all that effort hits them.

Surging up the hill is one of the most expensive things you can do in a race. The runners who charge the climb are usually the runners who fade right after it.

So here’s the rule. On the way up, hold your effort. Don’t worry about the pace. Accept that the pace is going to slow down. Everybody’s does.

So this is how you run it.

• Shorten the stride and quicken the steps.
• Lean slightly forward from the ankles, not the waist.
• Keep the effort steady, and let the pace be whatever it is.
• Eyes up the hill, a few meters ahead, not fixed at the top. If you’re staring at the top of the hill, it makes it seem like it’s going to go on forever and ever.

And practice even effort before race day. On a hilly easy run, tell them to keep their breathing at the same rate going up as it was on the flat part. If the breathing jumps all of a sudden, the effort jumped. It’s the talk test, only on a slope. Most kids have never run up a hill on purpose at the same effort. Teach it in practice and it shows up on race day.

And then the most important part. The crest.

Every runner in the field relaxes at the top of the hill. It’s only human. The climb is over, and the brain says breathe. That’s exactly where you have to make your move. Accelerate over the crest while everybody else is catching their breath, and carry that momentum down the other side. That’s where places change hands, and that’s where races are decided.

Segment Four · Downhill Equals Free Speed

Downhills should be free speed. Most high school runners turn them into a brake test.

They’re scared of falling, so they lean back. When they lean back, the legs straighten and the heels slam into the ground. What they’re doing is braking with every step. They’re actually running slower. And not only that, it beats up the quads, and it makes a fall more likely, not less likely.

So teach them how to run downhill.

• A light forward lean, not back.
• Quick, light steps, not long reaching ones.
• Let the arms swing out a little for balance. Think about how soccer players run. Get the elbows out, get the arms up a little bit higher.
• Carry the speed into whatever comes next.

And then, biggest part, practice this. Most teams never practice running downhill, and then they expect kids to be brave about it on race day. So find a safe, grassy slope and run some relaxed downhill strides once a week. Confidence going down is a skill. It’s one of the cheapest places on a hilly course to gain ground without spending extra energy, and without tiring out your quads.

One more thing about hills, and it’s a big one. You don’t get it all back. The time a runner loses by overspending on a climb is more than the downhill will ever return. So “I’ll make it up on the way down” is kind of a losing plan. Just spend carefully going up, and take everything the downhill offers on the way down.

Mud and soft ground work the same way. Everybody slows down. The runner who slows down the least wins. So if you find yourself in a muddy section, shorten your stride, get your knees up, make quick ground contact. Eyes ten to fifteen meters ahead, picking the footing.

Segment Five · Rehearse the Course

Championship courses reward the runners who rehearse them. Here’s how to rehearse.

Run the hard part in practice. You can’t always train on a championship course, but you can find a hill that’s similar. Look for one that’s similar in length, similar in grade, and in the last few weeks, put some work in on it.

Practice those crest surges. Run the climb at steady effort, and then surge thirty to forty meters past the crest of the hill. Recover, repeat. You’re training the exact moment the race gets decided, the moment everybody else relaxes.

Keep the hill sprints. Eight to ten seconds, all out, walk down. They run right into championship week, because they cost almost nothing and they keep the legs strong for exactly this type of course.

And practice the downhills. Relaxed strides down that same grassy slope.

And one dress rehearsal, early in the final weeks, before the taper starts. Find a loop with a real climb in it, something around a mile. Run it two or three times at goal effort with a full recovery in between, and make the crest the fastest part of every loop. The point isn’t fitness anymore. It’s rehearsal. You want the move over the top to feel like a habit before it ever has to be a decision.

And rehearse it in your head. Before the race, eyes closed, run the course from the gun to the finish. Every turn, every climb, every landmark. See two and a half miles. Feel the hurt arrive. See yourself pushing over the top of the hill anyway, and then see the finish, and see yourself succeeding.

If you can get on the actual course before the championship, even once, use it. Jog the loop, walk the hills, stand at the bottom of that big climb and talk through how you’re going to run it. A kid who’s already seen the hill isn’t surprised by it, and surprise is expensive mid race.

Segment Six · Derryfield Finds Out

In the very first episode of this show, I said Derryfield has a hill in it that finds out who you really are. I still believe that.

Here’s what I mean. A flat course lets you hide things. A kid with good speed and a thin aerobic base can still hang on a flat course and kick. A hilly, rooty, technical course doesn’t let you hide anything.

Long climbs, steep hills, roots on the trails, rugged terrain, sand, loose gravel. It’s honest. It asks the same question on every climb. Did you build the engine? Did you build the strength? Did you practice this?

The aerobic base is what lets a runner keep her effort steady on a climb at two and a half miles, instead of having the wheels fall off. The hill sprints and the strength work are what hold her together. Her form stays upright even when her legs are gone. The downhill practice is what lets her take free seconds while everybody else is braking and slamming their heels into the ground. And the course walk is what tells her where the race is going to happen before it happens.

None of that gets done in October. It gets done in July, in August, in September. Derryfield, that’s just where you pick up the receipts.

So when people ask why some teams always seem to run better at the championship than they did at the invitationals, that’s my answer. They didn’t get better in a week. They prepared for the course, and the course rewarded the preparation.

Segment Seven · Monday Morning

Monday morning. Five things you can do this week.

One. Get the championship course map. Mark the first turn, every major hill, the two and a half mile mark, and go over the last four hundred meters. Hand this to every varsity runner on your squad.

Two. Plan a course walk. If you can get there, go. If you can’t, put up a video. Walk them through it. Talk about what’s coming up.

Three. Find a hill near you that looks like the big one in your race, and run some crest surges on it. Try it once this week.

Four. Add relaxed downhill strides to one of your easy days.

Five. Reset expectations. Tell your athletes, tell their parents, that on a championship course you’re racing places. You’re not racing the clock. And then compare every runner to her own last race on that same course, and stop the comparisons any time after that.

Close

Back to those runners who raced Derryfield in 2022 and 2023. They ran slower, and some of them probably thought they’d gotten worse. They hadn’t. They’d gotten stronger, and a new route swallowed that improvement.

That’s the whole lesson in one data point. The clock tells you about the course. The places tell you about the runner.

So read the course. Teach your kids to read it. Spend carefully on the climbs, attack the crests, take the downhills for what they offer, and know exactly where two and a half miles is, so you can be there to support your runners after the gun goes off.

Championship courses reward those who rehearse them. Make sure you have.

Next week we’ll talk about the taper: how to cut the volume without losing fitness, and how to bring a team to a sharp point on the day that really matters.

I’m Coach Saltmarsh. Read the course and race the hills. Keep it salty, and I’ll see you next week.