Head for the hills

Introduction

For distance runners, you might think that hill work should be confined to the winter months when we are getting ready for cross country, possibly stretching into spring as part of the transition into faster track work. It certainly is important at these times of year, but by varying the format of our hill sessions they can be useful at any time.

With limited access to the track for training over the summer of 2021, we’ve been using places such as Wittenham Clumps a lot more, not the first place you’d think of for getting ready to race on the synthetic path. But by being a bit more creative we came up with sessions that fulfil exactly that purpose, and hills formed an important component. In the words of the famous New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard, “hills are speedwork in disguise” – used appropriately of course.

Obviously, hill sessions of any sort are going to be good for developing leg strength, simply because you are working against gravity. We can though break hill work into three very broad categories (and here I’m thinking of training for track, road and cross country and not mountain races or fell running).

Long hills

First off is long hills – those that take 2 or 3 minutes to climb. These make us work our aerobic systems (our ability to take in and utilise oxygen) really hard compared with doing the same distance on the flat. What’s more, as well as driving our legs and lifting our knees, we are having to use muscles in our arms and trunk to maintain form to keep going, so we are getting a load more bang for our buck.

Long hills are going to be important during the early part of winter work when we are focusing on strength and endurance. Getting to the top and stopping is OK as far as it goes, but we can add more value if we carry on past the summit on some flatter ground. Being able to change gear as the ground levels out is a really useful asset in a race if your opponents are in the habit of having a rest as they crest a hill.

Steep longer hills such as we might find going up onto the Ridgeway are something else, legs screaming and lungs bursting, a real test of that prerequisite for distance running, sheer bloody-mindedness. A valuable session if you want an indication of how your winter work is going before you move on to more specific preparation for the big championship races. Just not a session you need very often – our famous annual pre-Yuletide visit to the monument on the Ridgeway fits the bill nicely.

Kenyan hills

You don’t have to go to East Africa to do Kenyan hills – this is a broad term for a session involving continual ups and downs. You can do these as a single longish run, as a circuit that you run several times with a short break between, or you can run back and forth across a valley for a set amount of time, again either as a single run or a series of shorter efforts. Here you are putting your system under continual stress with a short but active recovery and obviously, it’s great race practice for cross country.

Remember too that downhill technique is important, keeping the brakes on can mean you’re more tired going down than you were going up, and you are putting yourself at greater risk of injury.

Short hills

The final category is short hills, and while you can do sessions that drive lactate levels through the roof it’s those that work on speed that I want to concentrate on. The ability to kick hard, really hard, at the end of a race requires leg strength, and while you can improve this in the gym many distance runners prefer to be outside running about.

Absolute speed (i.e., flat out runs over 40 – 70 m) doesn’t feature in their training programmes very often, we’re usually more concerned with running “fast and fluent” and so if and when we do “flat out” (in distance running terms that is) stuff on a track there is a serious risk of injury. A much safer way to do it is to use short (10 – 20 sec duration) runs up a steepish hill – you have to hit full whole-body power to get up it and it’s short enough so that you are not driving your acid levels up very much before you turn round and walk back down.

The other advantage is in marketing. We are usually more concerned with running fast when we’re tired, simulating the end of a race, and so asking distance runners to do 10 - 20 second runs on a track when fresh is a complete anathema, often eliciting cries of “this is too easy”. Not a comment I heard when we devoted an entire session to short hills at Wittenham back in August. And were they speedwork in disguise?? – absolutely.

Lydiard always was keen on hills, but advice on their value for distance runners goes back very much further. There is the well-known opening line in Psalm 121 – “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help”. How true, never waste a good hill.