HILL TRAINING - June 25, 2015

I probably don’t have to remind you that hill training has been an integral part of your training/practice routine.  These sessions often times are in the form of short, explosive sprints – 10-15 seconds at max effort, or long repeats of 60-90 seconds.  These workouts serve a useful purpose.  The former improves cardiovascular and neurological efficiency while the latter improves muscle strength.  But, if you’re looking to improve your ability to kill the hills on race day, incorporating rolling hills into your threshold and long runs is the best solution.  Including rolling hills into your runs provides your muscles and physiological systems the specific stimulus that it will face on race day — improving form over longer and more gradual hills and maintaining pace up and over the hill.

Inserting some hills into your daily runs teaches you how to pace yourself up and over hills so you can keep the effort within your target pace range during the race. Many runners attack hills too hard during a race, and as a consequence they go anaerobic and have to slow down considerably once the hill is over. The correct approach to hills during a race is to maintain the same effort up and down, which will even out the pace over the long run. By practicing this tactic in training, you can become an expert at it on race day and save yourself from exerting too much energy.  Rolling hills are also a great way to prepare for a hilly race because they don’t require a change to your normal training routine. You can still execute all the threshold and long runs you need, but by changing your route to include a few hills, you’ll be specifically preparing yourself to handle the hills on race day.

Top picture - Looking UP the Planter's Hill path at World's End (110' elevation over 1/8th of a Mile)
Bottom picture - Looking DOWN the same path!