Anyone have success replacing intervals with hill repeats?

The point of hills is essentially that you get an equivalent aerobic workout without the same physical stress as running flat repeats. Aerobic training is a function of heart rate over time while musculoskeletal stress is a function of pace. Hills allow you to hit the necessary heart rate at a lower pace.

So hills are good if the purpose of the workout is just to build aerobic fitness. You'll also want to do flat repeats at some point for the neuromuscular aspect of training.

Not really an either/or. I'd lean more toward hill repeats during base phase, and more toward flat repeats as the season progresses.

Hills are also great for neuromuscular recruitment, because you recruit more fibers running uphill than on the flats.

Hill running causes a faster delta-HR than running on the flats, which is the best way to cause hypertrophy in your left ventricle.

I think one aspect of hill running that doesn't get discussed enough is that, unless you're fortunate to live in the mountains where you have multi-mile climbs, hill running pretty much requires recovery ratios of better than 1:1. This means that even if you're pushing really, really hard, you won't accumulate serious oxygen debt as the repetitions continue. This is another form of insurance against overtraining.

Finally, muscular fatigue sets in earlier while doing hills, which makes it harder to do too much.

As others have mentioned, hills are a bit different physiologically wise with recovery time, muscular fatigue, etc. However, I've found success using them instead of track work over the past year or so. For example, instead of doing 16 x 300m at 5k I'll do 16 x 50s with jog back down recovery. Instead of 4x400, 4x300, 4x200 I'll do 4x75s, 4x55s, 4x35s. I feel like especially since I race on the roads a lot more than the track, hills are more beneficial to my own personal training. The turns on the track and the surface tend to beat my legs up a bit more than sticking to the roads, and running hills lets you run more by effort than focusing on a specific pace on the track. Running hills vs track for repeats isn't necessarily better, it all depends on the context of your training.

Awesome information here.

Question: does the gradient of the hill affect the usefulness of training?

For example, I have a 1 mile 5% hill and a short 10% one nearby....would one be better than the other? Combo?

Forcerunner wrote:

Running hills vs track for repeats isn't necessarily better, it all depends on the context of your training.

For xc I would think hills would be better as it focuses more on strength than speed correct?

hills for base wrote:

The point of hills is essentially that you get an equivalent aerobic workout without the same physical stress as running flat repeats. Aerobic training is a function of heart rate over time while musculoskeletal stress is a function of pace. Hills allow you to hit the necessary heart rate at a lower pace.

So hills are good if the purpose of the workout is just to build aerobic fitness. You'll also want to do flat repeats at some point for the neuromuscular aspect of training.

Not really an either/or. I'd lean more toward hill repeats during base phase, and more toward flat repeats as the season progresses.

You miss one of the main reasons for doing hills. Increase leg stength and hence speed

To the op do both.

Booboomagoo - The gradient certainly comes into play. Comparing the two different hills isn't really a fair comparison though. The short 10% grade would be more useful for specific speed work like hill sprints, where the longer lower grade hill would be more optimal for longer repeats. They can both be fit into training however!

insertcleverusernamehere - I think when it comes down to it, whoever is the more fit runner is going to win the race. Hills will certainly contribute and play a small percentage of benefits when running cross country, but if athlete A is a 30:00 10k runner who trains on just the track running against athlete B, a 32:00 10k runner using hills instead of the track, most likely the first runner will win the race just because they are a more fit athlete. Hills can certainly level a playing field for athletes of similar ability I believe though. If the same athlete B is running against athlete C, a 31:45 10k runner on an xc course and Athlete C has no experience with hills whatsoever, perhaps athlete B will come out ahead since they are more used to the rolling terrain and strength work.

I will say, that my "speed" has gotten remarkably better doing hill work along with the "strength" that people usually refer to as well.

Do both. Focus on hills for 4-6 weeks then intervals for 4-6 weeks.

Download the updated wisdom of JK file. It's huge, but there's a lot of good compiled information on hill training in there.

Thank you! ... and I didn't mean to thread jack you op but this is just a very good thread.

No mention of running the downhills fast? Works for Daniel Rudisha. Great for neuromuscular system. I think the hills are just as effective as intervals for cross country or marathon training, and a great transition between base and intervals for track training.

coachkritter wrote:

No mention of running the downhills fast? Works for Daniel Rudisha. Great for neuromuscular system. I think the hills are just as effective as intervals for cross country or marathon training, and a great transition between base and intervals for track training.

Lydiard's athletes did that, focusing on turnover.

ukathleticscoach has the correct answer

As far as I have heard, Mark Nenow (U.S. 10000 record for 15 years) ran little or no track intervals and just pushed the hills in his 2x day runs.

Jack Foster also did well with that approach.

You might find this useful. I dropped a little over 30 seconds off my 5k time in about 6 weeks using hills as my only speedwork.

http://fullstriderunning.com/hill-training-weight-training-for-runners/