Does living in a hilly area effect your running quality and quantity?

It is very flat around here.

I wish there where a lot more hills like where you are.

As long as you can keep a consistent pressure on with your running, down worry about the ups and downs or the pace, as they are making you much stronger and giving you an all round development.

You will always need to adjust for your environment (extreme temps, humidity, altitude, etc.).

Particularly for your summer base miles, you should foces on feel / effort and not pace. You may actually need to back off to 6:45 -7:00 pace at home to make the same "easy" effort as your "flat" 6:30.

Long term, you will gain strength by the constant exposure to the hills. Your hill pace will gradually get closer to 6:30. Hopefully, when you return to school, the efort to maintain the flat 6:30 will be easier.

Thanks for the advice. It's not necessarily that 6:30 feels hard on flat, It actually feels quite comfortable and even dropping below 6:20s isn't too taxing. I have always found myself excelling on the hills, which really helped me in the championship 10k events for cross. Its nice to hear that it's more important to focus on feel then on pace. But in the long term, does running the hills help make you faster or stronger??? For example when running up a long hill, your pace is going to drop at least a minute while trying to keep a consistent effort. Would it have been just as beneficial if someone was running flat keeping the same pace constantly?

No, it won't be the same running a bit faster on a flat course than slower on hills. You're working different muscles running uphill than running on flat ground (even if the flat run is faster). You'll build up your quads and calves more, and get better at hills.

When I lived in Oregon I ran up and over a good sized hill most days. I felt much stronger IN GENERAL by doing so. That is, my flat runs felt much easier due to the hill running, even though my pace was slower over the hill. Like others have said, focus more on the "feel".

BCFM wrote:

when running up a long hill, your pace is going to drop at least a minute while trying to keep a consistent effort. Would it have been just as beneficial if someone was running flat keeping the same pace constantly?

That is balanced that you get more speed easier with less effort coming down, than you would on the flat.

I lived in a very hilly area, and running the hills every day made me strong. This was balanced by reps on the flat and the more moderate hills.

It's the best for training. A former champion boxer (Ken Buchanan)once said- once you get fit you can run for miles on a flat course. But the hills really find you out and push you on to another level

I originally come from a really hilly area & the best thing, is you do not have to push the pace. You are forced to work hard just to get up the hills

As said above you will have to adjust you times on a tough course and go off effort more.

Build the length of your runs up progressively to get used to the hills.

Living in a hilly area your training will be harder, but your racing will be easier (or faster!)

I live in a hilly area with 2 mile climbs on just about every run, but it is all gradual, which is the key. Hills are great and make you strong while not sacrificing pace or whatever; facing mountains every day, not so much. Try to find the best runs that are gradual climbs and you could have some pretty ideal training. I picked my 3 favorites and just run them all the time-I am always comparing my splits along the runs, but I guess they are through redwood forests so its not like I could ever exactly get bored my repetitive runs.

Yeah, it allows you to smoke people on a real XC course.

This was a major problem in college. Always going up or down. I think this interfered with the recovery days from speed work.

experience teaches that there are more good runners in areas with mountains and hills than in the lowlands. the elite goes into altitude training. conclusion: hills lead to many quality results. :)

stop focusing on hitting 6:30 pace and focus on getting stronger by running hills. For track I could see the no hills argument, but for xc you should absolutely be running on hills if you have access.

No , but it will affect it

Up hills are great but downhills not so much. What goes up must come down.

It doesn’t take much to get your heart rate up on a uphill which is great but a downhill is hard on the legs.

The best approach in my opinion is to run flat most days and once or twice a week do a hilly run. Or add hill sprints to the end of a run.

I grew up on a very hilly place but now I live in a very flat place. I have to drive 45 minutes to get to a hill. So instead I do a lot of squat type exercises to mimic up hill running. It works well cause when I do run a hill I have no problem.

I used to live in a very flat area (100 m climb on a general 12k run). Moved to a much more hilly area about a year ago where you easily see 200-300 m climb without even trying to aim for hilly areas. General observations:

1.) I am stronger on hills compared to what I was in relation to long term running buddies

2.) My cruising pace in long runs or flat areas decreased by about 20 sec/km, so what I gain on hilly sections I loose on flatter sections of courses.

3.) Overall heart rate on flat area runs is lower than before,

4.) HR when doing intervals in flat areas is much more difficult to raise to 90-95% or max HR than before.

Downhill running is about technique. Once you get the technique down, you can fly downhill.

Moo Goo wrote:

This was a major problem in college. Always going up or down. I think this interfered with the recovery days from speed work.

I agree. The uphills weren’t the issue for me, it was the downhills. You get a lot of quad work going downhill and you use your quads quite a bit when running really fast.

I ran for 4 years in a completely flat city as a 16:54 5K guy doing 4:30/km easy pace. I spent 3 weeks in the south of Spain in a campo which is basically houses on hills. My weekly elevation went from 0m to 2,878m! (90 miles a week). The first 3 days were hell, just getting up those hills my heart rate felt the same as the last 1K of a 5K race and my pace was 7-8/km! Sometimes slower. My legs always felt good too because I only had to run slow to get fit. I had good technique on the downhill or just walked if it was really steep. The last week I was flying up the hills at 4:55/km. When I returned home my easy pace went to 4:10/km just because the flats felt so easy/flat.

But it wasn't until I went back about 6 weeks later and spent another 3 weeks training those hills. Once I came back to the flats I went from 3:18/km 1K reps to 2:57/km and I ran a 16:30 tempo run on my own!

Feels bad now though because I can't train on hills and I've just slowly lost all that fitness :(

I moved to a hilly area last year and had the same type of concern so hopefully I can shed some insight. I basically live at the highest elevation point at the top of a mountainous area (Bel Air), so each mile can be struggle. e,g. 10-mile run will usually be about 1,200 feet of both elevation and descent. I try to average under 7-minute pace but as you can imagine it gets pretty crazy when the grade goes as high as 15% during some segments.

If I drive to go to a flatter area, my pace is typically about 40 seconds faster per mile at less effort. The keyword here is "effort" and pace is basically irrelevant. If you're worried about how fast you're clipping by each mile, use something like Strava and look at your GAP (grade-adjusted pace) to make sure you're hitting the right relative pace.

BCFM wrote:

I was curious about how living in an area that is hilly effects the quality and quantity of your run. For example if you are running fifty minutes a day, TRYING to maintain 6:30 pace how will that compare to if you were running 6:30 pace and 50 minutes, or even 60 minutes on a relatively flat run.

The thing about where I live is that I really cannot go on a run without running on some pretty big mile climbs. Im running the training program for my college, but each run is not relatively comfortable maintaining a good quick pace.

Advice or insight would be appreciated.

I've grown up on nothing but hills, and didn't even realize it until I got older. Your training runs will slow, but your overall strength will benefit greatly. You develop muscles, and lung capacity that flat road running IMO can't generate. Not saying to neglect flat surface leg turnover with strides, or intervals, but those don't need overdone, as the hills do so much already. Even with paces much slower in comparison to your 5k.