Hill Repeats
Hill Training! Why bother? Hills are tiring...
Whats the point?
Hills build power and muscle. They make you lift your knee higher, they provide maximum force as you fight to overcome gravity. There are loads of different workouts on the internet for hills but most have a common warning- don't overdo hill work. Once or twice a week and allow recovery because you really are loading your muscles.
So what to do?
You can argue that hill work could be broken down into four main areas: 1.Long slow hill work - half mile of moderate hill into a long run every few weeks. 2.Long hill repeats - 4-6 x 30 sec with 30 sec rest.. 3.Short hill repeats- 2-6 30 sec sprints with 2 mins rest. 4.Down hill work- strides downhill to build Quad strength. So today I went and combined points 2,3 and 4 into a single session as I'm fairly happy running hills on long runs. Here's what i did 6 long repeats 0.1 mile taking about 35-40 sec- jog recovery 3 short repeats(dividing the hill into 1/3rd- turning at each third) 2 Long repeats but working as hard on the downhill (covering point 4) In total taking about 20 mins. I was fun but quite tiring 😀
