Hill question (Read 696 times)

I shorten my stride, whether or not I increase my turnover depends on how I am feeling. I also shorten my stride when going down steep hills, I find that it reduces impact and lessens the chance of developing blisters.

Running up hills, I definitely shorten my stride. If it's an easy run, I wll also back my pace off a bit. If I'm pushing myself, my leg speed will increase. Downhill - unless it's a very steep drop, I just use it as recovery time and let gravity do it's work. This may or may not be technically correct... but it works for me.

Am I doing this right? When I get to a hill I shorten my stride slightly and try to increase my leg speed. Is that right?

To keep the same stride, your hip flexors have to work double time on the hills, not to mention everything else, and if they aren't up to par you bonk really fast. My hip flexors are terrible. I hate running hills. Hills, in my opinion, are like moguls in skiing. Very difficult to master. One of the tell-tale signs of an expererienced runner is the one who can pace effectively on the hill and then power over the top and continue strong. At the weekly races, a guy I used to normally beat for free overtook me on one of the really hilly courses and I ended up walking. We are both very experienced runners, and I should have known better. I paced conservatively during the course knowing the hills to come, but the moment I saw him in my rear view mirror I upped my pace too much. The better strategy would have been to take it easy and try to catch him on the backside. Conditions change quickly on hills, so if you push right up to your limit, sometimes you realize the hill got steeper, and everything falls apart. Your form, breathing, lactic threshold. It all goes to hell. You always have to save something on the hills. The mindset I try to employ on an unfamiliar hill is, "if this hill flattened out right now, could I power over it and take advantage of the flat or downhill?" If the answer is "no", then I'm likely going to fast. The trick, in my experience, is to run different hills as much as possible. Once you "know" a hill you start adjusting pace and stride to conserve energy as necessary and expend it when you know "it's safe". As a kid, I used to run the mile and my dad (the coach) would drop the distance runners off at the bottom of a steep 2 mile hill to run to the track. I knew that hill so well that by the end it was just a normal run. But then when I'd do races with hills with different grades and terrain, I'd still fall apart. Learning to pace on hills is tough.