Downhill courses are faster, but the way you train must change.

Forget everything you think you know about running a marathon. When it's all downhill, the rules change.

Most obviously, gravity helps pull you along, helping runners shave off as much as a half-minute per mile, or nearly 15 minutes over a marathon. It's the main reason all three REVEL races — Rockies, Big Cottonwood and Canyon City — are among the top 20 marathons nationally in the percentage of finishers who qualify for Boston.

Gravity creates opportunities but also challenges. Running downhill stretches the muscles in different ways, and relies on your glutes and abs more than striding across level ground. It also affects your joints differently. And it changes the mental calculus, since no course offers a completely steady descent over 26.2 miles.

"Even if you're a seasoned runner, treat it as though it's your first marathon," said Michelle Krok, 48, who's run all three REVEL marathons and posted her personal record in Canyon City in 2014. "Try to model as much of your training around the course as you can."

More than 20 percent of finishers in Big Cottonwood, Rockies and Canyon City in 2015 qualified for Boston, making REVEL the fastest series in the United States. And it's clear from runner comments that Boston wasn't far from the minds of many participants in all three races. At least 16 percent of the finishers in all three races cited the granddaddy of American marathons as their biggest reason for running REVEL, while "fast" was the reason given by roughly equal percentages of runners, nearly a quarter of the Canyon City Marathon finishers.

All three races are in mountain ranges near cities, so it's little surprise that the beauty of the courses ranks as high as their speed to many runners.

Krok's fastest marathon of the 26 she's finished was Canyon City in 2014, where she posted a time of 3:41. That was just a month after she ran the Chicago Marathon, one of the country's flattest courses, in 3:58. While the Chicago course deviates by no more than 26 feet from the start, Canyon City loses about 5,000 feet, most of that in the early going.

Despite the stark differences in the courses, Krok said her basic strategy remained the same: to keep a steady pace no matter what other runners were doing and no matter how gravity tempted her to turn up her speed.

"For me, it's always been about leveling out my pace and making sure no mile is excessively fast," she said.

Many first-time downhill runners tend to let gravity make their stride artificially long, said Mark Minichiello, a running coach and pace leader in Southern California. Proper running form is even more important on descents, he said, so runners should strive for a comfortably short, consistent stride during training runs. He said runners should aim for a shorter stride and faster cadence.

"By doing so, they force themselves to stop each time," he said. "It's a braking motion. The impact goes up the leg and affects the knee. Runners have more of a chance of being injured on a steep downhill course."

Downhill running relieves the muscles and the heart in particular of some of the work of pulling your weight forward, but joints and certain muscles, such as the quads, may have to work even harder, Minichiello said. That means some time in the gym, not just running along pavement or trails, will pay dividends on marathon morning. And don't forget the ascents, Minichiello advised, even if the REVEL races emphasize fast descents.

"Running uphill helps a runner realize proper form," he said. "It's very hard to run uphill with bad running mechanics. It improves your stride length and knee lift. It makes your butt stronger, your tendons stronger. Typically your glutes, for a runner, are where your problems start."

Krok said maintaining precise foot movements, adjusted for hills, as well as a steady pace helped her conquer all three REVEL courses.

"My primary motivator was that it's scenic," Krok said. "The fact that it's a downhill course was also a motivator, since I'm already good on trails. But the biggest reason was that I wanted to be running through these beautiful mountains, with the trees and the clear air and everything being green."

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