For short hill sprints to build strength (40-100m) how steep of a hill do you normally use? Something that is obnoxiously steep that you would never experience in a cross country race, just your average gradually rising hill, or something in between (ie. about the steepest of hill you would experience in a race)?
8-12%
90 degrees gradient..I fight dragons for a living!
do a variety... do whatever is fun ... do whatever you feel like .. it' s all good youcan t' go wrong homeboyyyyyyyy
How do I measure the grade of a hill?
steep enough that the effort is different than flat ground. but not so steep that your running form is drastically changed.
Descartes wrote:
8-12%
Bingo. Most "fairly steep" hills are about that range. Anything over 14% is using different muscles (and it is hard to find anything that steep to be honest) and anything under ~6% is more useful closer to the season. 8%-12% is a good mix of pure power and speed.
www.gmap-pedometer.comhas an elevation feature that you can use to find the slope of a road. It is very accurate when measuring distance (I can measure tracks to 399-401 meters every time) and the elevation feature seems fairly accurate as well. Just find elevation, distance of the run, then put it into this formula:
100%*(elevation change in feet/distance in miles)/5280
so say the elevation gain is 20 feet, the distance is 65 meters (.04 miles)
100%*(20/.04)/5280=~9.5% (this is the hill I typically use, and run the ~65m in anywhere from 9.3 to 9.6 seconds when 90% (15 seconds/100m, worth maybe 12xx seconds on the track in spikes.
Use what you've got. Who the hell measures the grade of a hill anyways.
I've always said to my runners, "when you come to a hill, run up the damn thing" I guess I should be telling them to measure the grade to see if it is the right hill first?
Sir Edmund.. wrote:
Use what you've got. Who the hell measures the grade of a hill anyways.
I've always said to my runners, "when you come to a hill, run up the damn thing" I guess I should be telling them to measure the grade to see if it is the right hill first?
Sure, but different hills do different things...if you are on an easy run or tempo run just go by effort but if you want to do specific things during a workout you need to be specific with the hills you choose.
RIP: D3 All-American Frank Csorba - who ran 13:56 in March - dead
RENATO can you talk about the preparation of Emile Cairess 2:06
Running for Bowerman Track Club used to be cool now its embarrassing
Rest in Peace Adrian Lehmann - 2:11 Swiss marathoner. Dies of heart attack.
Hats off to my dad. He just ran a 1:42 Half Marathon and turns 75 in 2 months!
Great interview with Steve Cram - says Jakob has no chance of WRs this year