6 replies to this topic

[Heids27]

Hi all, hoping someone can help a newbie out!

Im doing my half marathon training for GC and following the program on the website. Im new to speed work and hill reps and am just not sure how to go about hill reps. The program simply says "10 hill reps"...doesnt say how steep the hill should be, or how long, or how long they should take me!

Is there an indicator of how steep/long these hills should be?Will just any old hill do?! if i had to do it on the treadmill what incline would be indicative of a decent hill?!

Sorry if it sounds silly i just have no idea

[brownsinglet]

Here is a good article on hill running enjoy.

Steve

[Suzy]

When I do hill reps I run at about 10k race pace up a 400m hill, then turn around and jog slowly back to start, repeating as many times as required (usually 4-6). I've no idea what the gradient is, but its steep enough to be hard work without changing your running stride too much.

[maryclaire]

I assume that the program on the website is Pat Carroll's? If so, then from memory he means hills that will take about 30 seconds to get up - they don't have to be very steep in order to keep the pace fairly high. You need to push off from the balls of your feet and get a nice, high knee lift. The jog back down the hill equates to the recovery between reps.

[scurry711]

I'd like some advice about hill training. I started doing specific hill training on the treadmill. At the moment I'm doing 6 reps of 500m at threshold pace and want to keep building it up to gain strength. Today I did two reps at 4%, two at 4.5% then two at 5%. Between hills I drop back to 1% and run another 500m at my easy pace to recover. After completing the hill reps and recovering I have been running some extra km's at marathon pace before cooling down.

Just wondering what people think the optimal incline on the treadmill would be to aim for to build up strength and subsequently increase speed. Should I keep going to 10 reps and then keep increasing the incline, and where does it end??

Cheers.

Edit: I should add that uphills are my weakness so I need a lot of work in this area.

Edited by scurry711, 21 April 2009 - 07:37 PM.

[Heids27]

maryclaire, on Apr 18 2009, 03:55 PM, said:

I assume that the program on the website is Pat Carroll's? If so, then from memory he means hills that will take about 30 seconds to get up - they don't have to be very steep in order to keep the pace fairly high. You need to push off from the balls of your feet and get a nice, high knee lift. The jog back down the hill equates to the recovery between reps.

Yup its the Pat Carroll one Excellent thanks for that, theres one near my house which might do the trick. im assuming hill reps are for strength training more than speed?

[FrankieP]

scurry711, on Apr 21 2009, 07:35 PM, said:

I'd like some advice about hill training. I started doing specific hill training on the treadmill. At the moment I'm doing 6 reps of 500m at threshold pace and want to keep building it up to gain strength. Today I did two reps at 4%, two at 4.5% then two at 5%. Between hills I drop back to 1% and run another 500m at my easy pace to recover. After completing the hill reps and recovering I have been running some extra km's at marathon pace before cooling down.

Just wondering what people think the optimal incline on the treadmill would be to aim for to build up strength and subsequently increase speed. Should I keep going to 10 reps and then keep increasing the incline, and where does it end??

Cheers.

Edit: I should add that uphills are my weakness so I need a lot of work in this area.

Hallo Scurry, I do most of my training on the treadmill including hill sessions. Remember than on the tready you need to keep the incline at around 2% for 'flat' running to negate the effect of the tready sort of pulling your legs back for you [if you see what I mean!], so how I take it is that any hill incline would be on top of that to be comparable to a 'real life' hill incline. Your hills would effectively only be around 2-3% then once considering the treadmill effect too.

Because of this I do my hill sessions on 6 and 8 % to ensure I actually get a decent climb happening. It certainly feels steeper and I need to reduce my speed by a kmh or two, but is great for strength and good too to get a hard workout in less time. Not sure about doing them threshold pace I must say; I'd rather keep those two training goals separate, and do hills as hills and threshold work as threshold work!

These be just my humble ponderings though. [/disclaimer]