Hill Training (Read 705 times)

I think that hill training is good for you (it's really just speed work in disguise) but if you are training for a flat marathon, then you don't need to go out of your way to add hills. It probably doesn't hurt, but you shouldn't stress over it.

I live in a hilly area and when I run outside their are hills on every run. My question is "define a hill workout?" Is it the number of hills you run? Is it the elevation of the hills you run? While I was running yesterday I was thinking just about of of my outside runs could be considered a hill workout. Would I be correct?

I'm not Blaine and may give you a different answer, but hill workouts can be any number of things and have many different goals. But, yes, I'd consider running rolling terrain a hilly run. Whether you consider it a "workout", depends on whether you use "workout" for all your runs or have a certain usage of it (some folks use it only for non-easy runs). Lydiard was a strong proponent of running hilly routes. I personally like just running rolling hill routes since it teaches you pace / effort judgement to run over the top of a hill and take advantage of gravity on the downhill (free speed). FWIW, I'm usually training for hilly trail races, and my hill-related runs get classified as rolling (many little hills, 10-30% slopes, mostly 40-180 ft high), hill "repeats" (running same small hill multiple times, usually in the 3-6 min range for the up), med hill (about 700 ft hill, 5-30% slopes, done a couple times), big hills (generally 2000-3000ft vertical, but may be 1000ft in winter; frequently power hiked up, run down), long runs when I can get to hills generally have 2000-4000ft (hopefully more this year) of hills in the 1000ft range. Each has a purpose. I may also do some Lydiard hill drills in there - either as part of runs or when I have limited non-icy terrain so just keep going up and down the one hill. I included these just as examples of various hill workouts for specific purposes and goals - not suggesting they're useful for anyone else. If I were training for a flat race, I'd probably just run the rolling hill route since I can keep moving at relatively constant effort on that. Maybe working the uphills on some runs, and the downhills (overspeed) on other runs - or even on individual hills. (Many of my bigger hills are sufficiently steep that the form is different from flat running. While they provide strength endurance, I find I have to train more on the flat for flat races or hilly races that have flat sections. For me, somewhere in the 3-8% slope range makes a good hill run for a flat race.) One key to hills is to have an objective for whatever you do. Everything falls into place then. Enjoy!

I generally train with hills and just consider it part of the course, since I do a lot of trail running in areas where there are hills. I can get some flattish runs once I'm past the hill near my house but going in the other direction is gonna involve some serious climbing. I generally only consider a hill a hill workout if the point of going out there is to work the hills. It might be uphill repeats or it might be downhill repeats, but depending upon where I am in the season I try to get hills in on speed day at least a few times per month if not per week. Running hills during an easy run, though, just means that I slow down a little as I go. (Or not, if I feel good.) How you classify it doesn't really matter though. It's a little extra speedwork without it actually involving the extra thought processes during my normal runs, and when I am going to run a flat race I don't go out of my way to get extra workouts on hills in. Nor do I go out of my way to avoid them. If I am training for a race that has a lot of hills, then I make the effort to find some good ones (the specific ones if possible) and train on those. For Boston I did a lot of downhill work ahead of time, for Beach to Beacon I try to find a good sized hill to do repeats up (since I rarely drive all the way to Cape Elizabeth for a workout these days - a few years ago I used to train on the hill itself.)