Please note that for the month of December and January, I will be on a monthly schedual. After that time I will again be doing weekly articles.
Thank you for your understanding. John
Thanks to Shawn McDonald for this valuable information! Be sure to check out his web site which is listed on the links page!
Hill workouts (Hills, Hills, and more darn Hills !)
There are several different types of hill workouts that one can put into your ultra training schedule. Here I'll try to briefly describe each, their purpose, and how to in general design a hill workout.
A word of caution: be sure to start out with just a few reps at a moderate effort for the first couple of sessions, and then build up from there.
Running uphill does work your musculature and connective tissues differently than flat running. Try for progress over a number of weeks.
The basic types of hill workouts are:
fartlek - a run over rolling terrain where you run the uphills at about a 10k effort level, and cruise on the downhills to recover, typically 4-10 short/moderate length hills (see below for definition of short/medium/long)
repeats - running the same uphill over an over, with the recovery portion on the downhill, can also do up one side, down the other, and repeat (ala Cowles Mountain)
power walk repeat - steep hill where you go up by powerwalking, and go back down the same side by running at a comfortable pace whooshers - where you run the downs quickly, with "quick feet" and walk the ups, develops ability of quads to take a pounding.
short hill - 25 to 200 meters long of grade 3-10%, for shorter, quicker burst repeats, takes 15-60 seconds to run up medium hill - standard hill of length 300-400 meters, with grade of 3-6%, not too long or short, takes a couple of minutes to run up.
long hill - more gradual than moderate hills, with length bounded by your patience, usually 600 meters to 1 mile, at a grade of 2-5%.
To design a hill workout, you must decide on the number of repeats (hard ups or downs) to do, the effort level of the repeats, the grade of the hill you want to run, the recovery time between hills (somewhat dictated by the terrain for a fartlek), and the total length of the workout.
I suggest starting with 3-5 repeats of short or moderate length at 85% of max effort (about what you
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