foreign marathon training

currently i am focused on training for the columbus marathon (oct 19). i am wanting to run a 3:10 in order to qualify for boston '09.

this means taking my marathon time of 3:29 down by 20 minutes.

i have gotten extremely lucky with where i am living in italy. instead running in the very flat city of parma, my house is in the hills in tordenaso (tower of the nose... odd translation). it has proved to be some very good training, and provided some exquisite views.

a problem i have run into is that google pedometer's hill function doesn't work.

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/

so it looks like i get to go back to the old school calculation of driving my 2+ hour routes in a car, and then doing pace calculations post run.

if you are ever in a country that uses kilometers runner's world provides a pace calculator that will convert from miles for you.

http://www.runnersworld.com/cda/paceconverter/