Due to the area I live in, I run hills every single day and I run about 60 mpw. Sometimes they are substantial climbs with at least 3 miles of the run being a continuous uphill. I havent had problems with injuries, but Im wondering if this will delay my recovery? Also, I know this may sound like a joke but its not, could too many hills increase calf size too much? I love hilly runs but I need some reassurance.
You obviously don't know the wisdom of Henry Rono.
If there are few, if any, flat areas where you live, how have the high school runners survived over the years?
Sounds great!
You're making my achilles ache.
Actually the most dangerous side of the hill is the downhill portion.
I trained for 2 months on a treadmill at 12% incline. At this level, my stomach would hurt after runs but it was easy on my legs and my back which is why I was doing it in the first place. After that, I went to 3% for a month and down to 2% for another month. I was in pretty good shape and raced well. As soon as I started training more outside running the downs too, I have been injured repeatedly from my feet to my back.
Everytime I have had calf or achilles problems from a race, it happened on the downhills.
One downside, as I pretty much constantly run hills also, is that you will be really good at running hills (both up and down). That may sound like a joke, but it isn't, at least not completely. The potential problem is that when you are in a race and run up a hill, you may actually pick up your pace naturally and without realizing it. I do this all the time. On my training runs, I almost always start increasing my pace on uphills.
Anyway, you will have to watch yourself in races to make sure you don't mess up your pacing on the hills. I've done it more than once. I have two very hilly marathons I do a year. I've blown up several times by not taking it easy on the uphill portions on the first half.
Another potential problem is when your races have substantial flat portions. The last 14k or so of one of the marathons I run is mostly pancake flat. If you are tired and trying to run flat areas without training on flat areas, you'll really, really struggle. Last year I included some of my long runs on the track (mind-numbingly boring), just for this purpose, and it made a huge difference in that last 14k.
highschool students survive by doing recovery runs on the one flat road there is, and running on the track. That interesting though about increasing pace subconciously on the hills, I think that may be why I tend to find it harder to recover. A "easy" 5 mile run can feel hard when its full of hills. Thanks for all the advice
I run all of my miles in the mountains every day and I get well over 20k of climbing a week. The only problem I seem to have is that too much climbing makes me slower in flat fast races. I have the aerobic capacity just not the turn over I need to race flat stuff well. I never run flat easy races anyways so I dont care.