HILLS, HILLS AND MORE HILLS

THE POWER OF HILL SESSIONS

A recent training session for the day was 6 x 1/2 mile hill repeats at 6% incline with 4 – 5 minute jog recoveries and a warm down run. It’s a hard workout where you are pushing the efforts on the uphills.

Some proper hills in the Peak District!

But, I couldn’t quite find a decent enough hill where I was at the time. That didn’t mean I scratched the work out, I just substituted it to get the same training effect. So what did I do?

• 1 mile warm up
• 10 x 500m hill repeats with fast downhills to work the quads
• 8 mile undulating with last mile at recovery pace

Now, it’s not easy knowing you are going to have to do 10 x 500m hill repeats, so I set out to do four. Then when I got there I added another two and then it was easy I just said to myself lets get to ten.  The treat at the end was to have a really good eight mile run after you’ve warmed up doing a few hill repeats. Fourteen miles in total. Not bad for a Monday night.

And the eight miles seemed easy compared to the hill repeats!  Train hard, train smart.