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

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.

hills, in my opinion, allow you to be able to do less running because they challenge you more aerobically. i'm a fast twitch mid-distance guy

i usually run at 6:35-40 pace on flats for general running, but 8:00-30 pace on hilly trails is much harder.

just learn to monitor your effort. don't worry about the watch pace. or let Strava GAP factor in a bit. Sometimes a 9:30 minute mile uphill feels like running a 6:00 minute mile

guage your effort. it'll help you with racing and training, and will definitely be required for half marathons and marathons later in life.

HillyRunnerGuy wrote:

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.

I was also going to suggest the GAP feature on Strava. It is nice if you live in a hilly area and will help you see (after your run of course) if you were maintaining a steady effort on the hills.

It is kind of annoying to do Tempo runs in hilly areas though, as usually you just want to get in the groove of the pace.

hills are not everybody's thing wrote:

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. :)

Yeah, this is a myth. Look at pancake flat Alamosa, CO. Adam's State XC teams, XC legend Pat Porter, mountain running legend Pablo Vigil, Deena Kastor, NYC marathon winner and former CR Juma Ikangaa, and countless others. Yes it's at 7544 ft, but being mostly flat allows you to recover better and have a choice when you want to get the stress of hills/mountains (rather than being subjected to it daily and being worn out).

Running up and down hills of varying grade will assist your training by developing the associated muscle groups, without the repetitive strain of running on the same level grade routinely. If you're gearing toward longer races, this is of great benefit as longer races are typically going to be more varied in grade by virtue of length e.g. limited places to race 13.1 or 26.2 over flat.

Anecdotally, most of my mileage and nearly 100% of the quality miles are targeted deliberately over elevation change between 30-60 feet per mile to best prepare for the marathon.

While training paces may slow, the strength gained is more valuable.

alamosa says otherwise wrote:

hills are not everybody's thing wrote:

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. :)

Yeah, this is a myth. Look at pancake flat Alamosa, CO. Adam's State XC teams, XC legend Pat Porter, mountain running legend Pablo Vigil, Deena Kastor, NYC marathon winner and former CR Juma Ikangaa, and countless others. Yes it's at 7544 ft, but being mostly flat allows you to recover better and have a choice when you want to get the stress of hills/mountains (rather than being subjected to it daily and being worn out).

I am not sure how it's a "myth." Being at 7544 feet has to mean there are "a few" hills!

As a high school coach in Minnesota (which is not high altitude), I coached at a big high school.

We had more hills than rival schools had. What happened early in my coaching career was that our kids were

often injured early in the season. But by the end of the season we were better than all of the other

schools in our city. We benefited from the hills.

No, Alamosa is in the high valley and completely flat. You have to drive 30 min to get anything resembling an incline. It’s false to assume those at high altitude are so good cause of mountains/hills. Alamosa is great cause it’s flat and allows you to recover better, while getting the benefit of the high altitude. It’s the altitude, recovery, and well timed stress of hills that works so well.

From what I understand from what Canova has written on here. Geoffrey Kirui lives in a very hilly part of Kenya. Used to only run about 80 miles per week since he broke on to the scene. He has moved to other part of Kenya to do real marathon training. What has that resulted in? Him declining in preformances. He should get back to the 70% of training he was doing.

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2017/04/boston-winner-geoffrey-kirui-70-preparation-real-marathon-runner/

I lived in a mountainous area for two years in Central America at altitude. My daily runs had 5-15% inclines and declines consistently. I ran a lot but not fast. It made me super strong, especially the declines. But if you don't run fast you won't race fast. So I found a field about 1 km from my house and created a 200m track. I'd run about 10-15 miles sometimes when I was tired of the mountains. For long runs I'd go to the intercontinental highway.

Looking back I'd give up all the flat running to run in the mountains again. They give you strength like nothing else can.

Altitude just made it harder to run fast however I did sleep like a baby!

I find that running 5 miles on flat ground perfectly balances my energy. It is the best of my runs. I currently live in a hilly area and the runs feel unbalanced but are by default varied. I suppose there is some benefit but flat land is my choice.

I live in a hilly area and I get my volume in by not being a pu$$y

I live in a hilly area and at elevation. There is a river where I can run flat but it is a 20mn drive away so I end up running in the foothills, which are very hilly, often for my recovery runs. I think it is difficult to get proper recovery and I have to be careful to run a little slower and keep effort easy during recovery days. I also think it hasn't helped my often injured Achilles to have to run hills constantly.

Overall, I think having to do hills often is a benefit, but for recovery, it can make life a little more challenging. Sometimes I just want to set my pace and run, not having to worry about the struggle.

Too much of this thread talks about altitude and hills. Hills (without altitude) are hugely beneficial. Hills are not emphasised enough for track, and about right for x-c.

Henry Rono raved that he mostly only did hills. Mike Boit, a notoriously under-trainer, would do hills repeats as his main weekly workout. At least when he lived in Eugene.

This is exactly the issue that I face. For recovery runs I do one of three things: 1. Go back-and-forth on my street a ton of times since it's a small area that's flat 2. Run on my indoor treadmill 3. Drive 20+ minutes to somewhere more flat, run, and then drive 20+ minutes back

runkeller wrote:

Overall, I think having to do hills often is a benefit, but for recovery, it can make life a little more challenging. Sometimes I just want to set my pace and run, not having to worry about the struggle.

HillyRunnerGuy wrote:

This is exactly the issue that I face. For recovery runs I do one of three things:

1. Go back-and-forth on my street a ton of times since it's a small area that's flat

2. Run on my indoor treadmill

3. Drive 20+ minutes to somewhere more flat, run, and then drive 20+ minutes back

runkeller wrote:

Overall, I think having to do hills often is a benefit, but for recovery, it can make life a little more challenging. Sometimes I just want to set my pace and run, not having to worry about the struggle.

I'm too highly motivated to worry about a struggle.

Trying to maintain your 'easy' pace on hilly terrain is a fool's game. Just run by feel. I live in a very hilly area at the moment and all of my runs (even the warm up and cool down parts of my track sessions) are hilly. I go by effort for every run that isn't on a track. Two months ago my easy runs were 14km @ 5.00/km. Now I'm right around 4.30/km for 16km on a similar course for the same effort. Same as anything, if you do enough hill running you'll get used to it. For me it has been a revelation - my running has never been better, especially from 10k up.

The only caveat I would mention is that I do a lot of my running on trails. Uphills are ok but I have found long downhills on roads really beat the sh*t out of my shins, knees and lower back. Trails are far more forgiving.

To summarise: hills are good, effort beats pace, stay on trails if you can.

alamosa says otherwise wrote:

No, Alamosa is in the high valley and completely flat. You have to drive 30 min to get anything resembling an incline. It’s false to assume those at high altitude are so good cause of mountains/hills. Alamosa is great cause it’s flat and allows you to recover better, while getting the benefit of the high altitude. It’s the altitude, recovery, and well timed stress of hills that works so well.

"here is one example of a fast school on flat ground, therefore flat ground makes people faster."

It is probably more of that lots of talented runners on the team that are able to do well on flat training. For every fast school that has flat ground around it, I can point to a faster one that has hills, and claim that its because of the hills.

alamosa says otherwise wrote:

No, Alamosa is in the high valley and completely flat. You have to drive 30 min to get anything resembling an incline. It’s false to assume those at high altitude are so good cause of mountains/hills. Alamosa is great cause it’s flat and allows you to recover better, while getting the benefit of the high altitude. It’s the altitude, recovery, and well timed stress of hills that works so well.

alamosa says otherwise:

I have to take your opinion somewhat on the "inclines," but as it being a MYTH that high altitude runners being so good because of mountains and hills, even you have to admit that is not true. Tell me of another place like Alamosa where there are so many good runners and yet they have no hills? (Keep in mind that NO HILLS literally means just that. I lived in a town that is possibly the flattest city in our state and yet we did have a couple of hills. A hill can mean an incline that is only 10 yards long, baby.)

How can an elevated city have NO HILLs? How did it get on a hill? (Like Joe Vigil, who I met in person once said to us, "These are questions that need answering!" He was not talking about hills, but I like putting it in this response because I think he may respond to what you are saying with that sentence too.)

By living around hills and recording an average of well over 1000m climb per week, even without doing a single specific hill session, i can assure you that:

1) Hills make you stronger

2) Hill dont make you necessarily faster, especially if you race up to 10k - for that you need to do intervals and fast stuff on the flat

3) Hills hinder the recovery days, which you need to run much slower than you want to in order to... recover

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.

. . . and here I thought living in a flat area affected the quality and quantity of my running . . .