16 replies to this topic

[Morley]

I've never really done hill repeats before but I know many CRs I have met do them.

After a little research I did some on Tuesday night. I ran about 2.5K to a hill I thought okay and did 200m X 4 reps up the hill with a slow jog down. Times were 51s for the first two and 55s for the last two. I then did an easy run home for 7K all up. I struggled for running form on the last repeat so I'll do them a little slower next time and try to be a little more consistent with the time. I'm going to measure the angle of the hill this afternoon but thought it not too steep.

I'm after some discussion on what your hill repeats are like and any advice. My aim is to improve my 10K and half times. Cheers.

[Mick]

Morley, on Jul 26 2008, 06:28 AM, said:

I ran about 2.5K to a hill I thought okay and did 200m X 4 reps up the hill with a slow jog down. Times were 51s for the first two and 55s for the last two.

I'm no expert, but it sounds fairly short. The hill repeats I do consist of 6 x 4-5m, ~1km that varies from 5-10%. The purpose of my hill repeats is preparation for hills I will encounter in a race (eg Aubrey in Hunter Valley / Heart Break in C2S). I believe some people run hills as a max HR session, I use 1km intervals with 60-90s recovery for this.

[lactatehead]

Morley,

I think hill sessions serve two different purposes.

You can see it as a hard session that pushes your pulse up like an interval session. This will be like running 10 x 400 hard efforts and short recoveries.

Otherwise, you can do hills to develop your leg muscles which is good for your general form and your sprinting speed. For these sessions you need to concentrate on technique and practice things like high knee lifts and bounding which will require a full recovery between efforts.

I recommend reading Lydiard on hills as he goes into depth on how to do them effectively.

[Roffy]

that sounds fine morely, i would try and build it to about 6-8 repeats based on the time it took you to get up that one. I seem to remember from old posts you had a lot of achilles problems before. Be careful with the hill repeats, it really loads the achilles up. So never more than once a week and give it a miss if your achilles are feeling even vaguely touchy.

[Rudolf]

agree with Lactatehead.

to me hills need to be looked at like any other session.

1. purely aerobic (pace restricted by HR or by feeling, the lenght of the hill does not matter You can either keep repeating strict aerobic shorter hills or like continuos hill for 20km or longer if You can find one

2. anaerobic session, intentionaly going into high HR, possible to HRmax, targeting the lactic resistance, tolerance etc,
intervals from 40 secs up to possibly max 5 minutes, and any mixture of it with all the jazz about number of reps, lenght of reps and lenght and type of theresting interval, but hills or no hills this is a lactic anaerobic session.

3. sprinting speed, power etc, either upto 8 secs or in teh 20-30 secs range (but NO longer)

4. strenght building - Lydiard and others type of drills, up hill jumps etc, this is not really hill running, this is hills plyometrics, and here again You can do it in the 8 secs times or 20-30 or do it easy and for long time kinda aerobic drill session (very demanding mentaly).


Morley seems that You are focusing on the 2. variant of anaerobic stuff, 50-60 secs anaerobic I am of the view that this is not best choice for 10k-halfmara training and perhaps even counterproductive

Edited by Rudolf, 26 July 2008 - 10:24 AM.

[Suzy]

I'm no expert, but this is what I do. 4-6x 400m hills (10% grade) at 10k pace, with a jog back recovery. I try to focus on technique and staying strong to the end. My hill flattens out at the top and I try to run strongly over the crest before turning back for the recovery.

[maryclaire]

I will leave the theory of the benefits of hill training to other, wiser runners than I. However, I am following Pat Carroll's program to get me to the Melbourne Marathon and every month I am running hill repeats. His instructions are to run hills of about 30seconds duration - and they don't have to be all that steep. I usually run about 15 reps, with the jog back down as recovery. Sounds easy - but it's not!

I live in a flat area and struggle to find decent hills as part of my normal runs - and I really notice this when racing. you can pick the runners who regularly train on hills as soon as there is any incline. So it is worth incorporating hill training if you can.

[blair]

Morley, on Jul 26 2008, 06:28 AM, said:

I'm going to measure the angle of the hill this afternoon but thought it not too steep.

How do you do this?

[slowmo]

balri, on Jul 26 2008, 04:58 PM, said:

How do you do this?

There are little gadgets you can buy called inclinometers that look a bit like a hand-held sighting compass. Very easy to use but too expensive ($80-100) if you aren't doing it regularly. These days they also have very high tech hand-held laser range finders / inclinometers - fun to use but very pricey.

You can bodge up a perfectly adequate home-made inclinometer with not much more than a protractor (cheap one from the newsagent), piece of string and a weight to act as a plumb-bob. Here's an example

slowmo

[PEEKIE]

A slight hijack but still related to hill training. Am doing MM in Oct and six weeks later Point to Pinacle, Hobart to Mt Wellington 21.1 kms basically all up hill. What is the best way to start adding hill training to my running? Currently I have only just started to add undulating runs to my training after training on ovals in the lead up to GC. I want to have done some hill running pre Melb, is it best to do hill repeats or just to pick a hilly 10km course that I incorporate into my weekly training fortnightly and then hill repeats in the week inbetween. Advice greatly appreciated

[Morley]

Thanks for the feedback.

I've measured the hill at about 4 - 5 degrees. Fairly consistant grade until about a 30m section near the top that slowly levels off. If I start at the bottom of the hill it is about 400m to the top.

Balri - I measured it with a 610mm long spirit level and a ruler. Resting the spirit level at one end, I lifted the other end until it was level and measured the distance from the base of the raised end to the road surface. Then used trig calculation Tan=opp/adj to determine angle. I took 7 readings over the 200m I ran and used an average.

For those in the Keilor area it is the hill outside Overnewton School on Overnewton Drive.

[Mick]

balri, on Jul 26 2008, 04:58 PM, said:

How do you do this?

I use mapmyrun and measure the distance between the contour lines (eg find first contour line where hill starts and measure distance from here until the last contour line at the top of the hill, so you might end up with something like 50m of rise in 800m (~ 6%).

[Suzy]

balri, on Jul 26 2008, 06:58 AM, said:

How do you do this?

I just download my Garmin to Training Centre, then click on the graph where the hill peaks. This shows me the gradient.

[Morley]

Roffy, on Jul 25 2008, 06:54 PM, said:

I seem to remember from old posts you had a lot of achilles problems before. Be careful with the hill repeats, it really loads the achilles up.

Thanks for the warning. The Achilles has been great since late last year . I got a sore right hamstring in today's Olympic Dream Run 10K so no hill repats this week .

[slowaz]

Hey Morley, you know what I do: 6 x 450 mins (+ jog back recov) in about 2.10 up that killer in BBP. That's my fave workout, guarenteed to help with strength and speed. Cheers

[ican]

PEEKIE, on Jul 26 2008, 06:08 PM, said:

...is it best to do hill repeats or just to pick a hilly 10km course that I incorporate into my weekly training fortnightly and then hill repeats in the week inbetween. Advice greatly appreciated

Hi Peekie,

I live in a hilly area and when I concentrate on HM training and need a longer route, it is one without hills, so I basically 'steal' one of my long hilly runs and I find this affects my ability to run hills, so I gather from that that the hilly route is doing something positive. Does this make sense? Also, I'm training for City to Surf at the moment and have incorporated hill repeats. This seems to improve my ability to find extra explosive energy for hills in races. I'm no expert, this is just what I've found for me, and I am following this thread with much interest to get info from the experts. If you're doing a HM all uphill I would imagine that both would suit your training and it would not go to waste for MM.

Cheers
ICAN

[Morley]

slowaz, on Jul 27 2008, 12:08 AM, said:

Hey Morley, you know what I do: 6 x 450 mins (+ jog back recov) in about 2.10 up that killer in BBP. That's my fave workout, guarenteed to help with strength and speed. Cheers

Hi Slowaz. Haven't seen you for a while at BBP. The park is shut at night so it's Overnewton Road. Still doing long runs along the river but these are on weekends. Cheers.