I get crushed on hilly courses and I want to change that

Are the uphills or downhills your problem? But practice makes perfect, even with running hills. Living in a hilly neighborhood certainly has helped with my hilly races.

I live in a hilly neighborhood and run hills easy all the time but don't do a lot of hill repeats or anything like that unless our coach has us do them after practice (practice is only twice per week since this is a club).

I think I struggle with both, honestly. Definitely moreso with uphills, but really the only place I'm strong is on flats. The course I ran today had no flats, and I'm running it again in two weeks, and probably every year after for the foreseeable future.

On uphills I feel like my muscles start to seriously burn and stop functioning correctly, and I can't get a lot of power to propel myself up the hill.

On downhills I feel like I lose my balance and have to work hard just to stay upright, wasting a lot of energy I could use to go forward.

this is my problem too - I wear a hrm and see what hills do to my heart rate- I redline very quickly on a hill, wrecking my race.

I'm trying to run more long hill reps, but untl I improve, I just take care not to hammer the hills - so I don't redline and so I can catch up later. They only get, say 3 seconds on you on a hill - you can get it back later, right?

Not on courses that are all hills with no flats. If I can learn to balance better I bet I can attack the downhills. But the fact is I am not good at both (although I am worse at uphills) so that courses like the one I ran today are disproportionately difficult to me. I used to just avoid races on those sorts of courses when I ran alone honestly, but with an XC team that's clearly not an option, hahaha

hey Xenonscreams,

I did quite a bit of hills workouts during this last cycle. I think the more hills you run at a fast pace (hm pace to sprints) the better you'll get at it. For me it's like 200s, when I do them for the fist time in a cycle I suck and I get uncoordinated, if I keep doing them weekly my form gets better, and improves also all the rest. I think in the same way with hills.

I do 5 to 10 x 400m hill at 10k pace or faster if I feel like or 8/10 200m hills fast, like a R pace workout.

good luck!

When do you do those workouts? Is that an entire workout in itself, something you do after a workout, or something you do after a normal run? Since I think I need to work on hills a LOT more than my teammates do right now, I'll probably ask my coach about incorporating more hillwork. Even in practice when we do hill repeats occasionally I find myself lagging far behind my normal group.

xenonscreams wrote:

When do you do those workouts? Is that an entire workout in itself, something you do after a workout, or something you do after a normal run? Since I think I need to work on hills a LOT more than my teammates do right now, I'll probably ask my coach about incorporating more hillwork. Even in practice when we do hill repeats occasionally I find myself lagging far behind my normal group.

Yeah, I would count it as a workout. Also, during easy runs (not recovery ones) I try to keep the same pace when going up a hill. Sometimes I'm lazy about it and I slow down, but if I feel good I try to hold a good pace. Do them every week for a bit and see if that improves. I think the workout you suck the most at is always the one that will give you better all around improvements once you get good at it.

Yeah I definitely have to talk to my coach then. For something like strides I just added them in and it wasn't really much of an additional stressor, but this sounds more substantial. As of now I only do two days of quality, and both are workouts with my club. I wouldn't be opposed to doing more, but only if I could stay healthy in the process, and historically I've had trouble adding quality (I can pound away lots of miles like it's nothing, but it's usually new quality work that gets me hurt).

I used to practice circuits on a hill quite often, for example warmup well first then:

4x (1/2 mile up, jog 1/2 mile, 1/2 mile down, jog 1/2 mile)

5x (2x 220 up, 1x 1/2 mi down, jog 220's), 6 1/4 mi total

4x (3x 220 up, 1x 3/4 mi down, jog 220's), 6 miles total

Uphills for me were working at a good steady pace all the way up, jogging each for recovery, then flying back down as easily as possible. Sometimes I'd run down fast, but usually it was about my pace for a 10k. Developing coordination is the main thing with the downhills, not pushing them hard in a practice. I could always run away from my competitors on the downhills due to my practice, and was relatively even going up. The uphills have a lot to do with bodyweight too.

Uphill only sessions:

24x 220 up 6% hill, jog back down at 1/2 speed

Run up any random hill for 50 to 60 seconds, jog back down, and repeat for an hour. I did this one a lot.

20x 220 up steep hill, jog down easy, start each 3 minutes

10x 220 uphill sprints, jog down easy, start each 6 minutes

The last session was quite intense as I ran them at full speed, and ran well at the 10k off this.

I'm also weak on uphills, but maybe I can help on downhills. First, the slope of the hill matters when you apply these steps.

1. Increase cadence. Don't overstride, but land lightly on your feet. It's almost like your feet are just keeping you from falling down.

2. Think, "Out, not up." On the flats, we bounce a little. You don't need that upwards movement when running downhill. It's hard to describe, but you're pushing out (forward) more than up. The amount of push varies with grade and speed.

3. Rotate hips just a little with each step.

4. Do NOT brake when your foot hits. If you feel a jar, you're braking. You want to just float/fall down the hill.

5. If it's a steep hill, run a bit more vertical than normal and swing your arms across your body a bit more. This sounds exactly wrong, I know.

These aren't isolated steps. They sort of all work together. In a 5k, I can usually pick up 5 meters on a 100m downhill doing this. I'm about 21 minutes 5k'er so you probably wouldn't get quite as much.

I agree on cadence increase on the downhills. Overstriding is easy-but it's more effective, and less impact to just increase your turnover coming down. Visualize yourself riding a bike and just coasting-let those wheels just spin faster and faster, and float on down the hill.As for a uphill workout, I've got a spot near my home that is about 1300 yards long, and a 5% grade. I've spray painted 220 yard marks on the pavement. I run 440 up, then jog 220 down and repeat. One set for me is 5 repeats-and I've stairstepped up to the top of the hill. I try to do 2 sets-younger tougher folks would probably prefer 3 or 4 sets. It's a great strength workout, and it helps your recovery on hilly courses-you get dragged into oxygen debt. I try to do it every other week. A lot of people say that 20 or 30 second hill workouts are key. I disagree-I think longer-90 or 100 second help me more. On road race courses, nobody talks about 20 or 30 second hills-they are always much longer.

Oddly enough the longer hills (90+ seconds) are usually not so bad for me. It is short, explosive hills (probably more in the 20-30 second range) in a short succession which kill me. This is for XC, not road, and this particular course is nothing but those sorts of hills.

Also I don't know how to ride a bicycle so comparing it to cycling doesn't help me much hahaha

xenonscreams wrote:

Oddly enough the longer hills (90+ seconds) are usually not so bad for me. It is short, explosive hills (probably more in the 20-30 second range) in a short succession which kill me. This is for XC, not road, and this particular course is nothing but those sorts of hills.

In that case focus on short steep hills.

I did two sessions a week apart of 30x 27 & then 24 second sprints up a steep hill in Seattle, with easy jogs down, and repeated this 30 times in an hour with 2 minute starts. A few days after the second one I ran a quite good half marathon and flew past a guy in the last 800 or so who was known for his kick.

You could combine these with longer downhills if you wanted to work on those too, for example sprint 25s up, jog 95s up, sprint, jog, sprint, jog, long fast downhill, jog & head back up, repeat for several sets.

Don't know how to ride a bike??? I've never heard of such a thing. It must be an interesting or sad story. I hope you are soon able to discover the joys of bike riding. Once you learn, you'll never forget-it's just like riding a bike.....For short explosive hills, again, find a long hill-3/4 of a mile-and run your 20 or 30 second bursts, and then a short rest. I still think long hills will help your leg strength.Another thing to try this winter, if you live in or near such a climate, is cross-country skiing. If you can alpine ski, it's pretty easy to pick up-and it's a great way to cross train. It's all about exploding up the hills, and resting on the downs.

xenonscreams wrote:

Oddly enough the longer hills (90+ seconds) are usually not so bad for me. It is short, explosive hills (probably more in the 20-30 second range) in a short succession which kill me. This is for XC, not road, and this particular course is nothing but those sorts of hills.

Also I don't know how to ride a bicycle so comparing it to cycling doesn't help me much hahaha

I would look at your stride. Do you run with high cadence or relatively low cadence? Are you a bouncy runner or rather smooth? Improving stride by consistently doing drills etc. helps in technical terrain. I don't think you need to run more hills then you already do. But look at good cross country runner and see that they are mostly the smoothest runner, very efficient, as opposed to more powerful track runners that don't do so well on the cross. Also, doing some strength training in the gym for your legs will help

I'm very horizontal. Last time I ran in front of someone who hadn't seen me run before, he asked me if I was a marathoner (I've raced a marathon, but it's not my focus yet).

Another problem is how you attack a hill. Runners have always been told to keep their effort level on hills so as not to get worn out. This is sound advice for very gradual hills but is wrong for very steep hills.

The problem with very steep hills is that you can lose MASSIVE amounts of time by trying to keep your effort even. You want to charge the hill and get up it as FAST as possible and then catch your breath on the flat or downhill. This is especially noticeable in trail races that may have steep hills 200 to 300 ft high. On a quarter mile hill you can lose 2 minutes by walking instead of charging up it at 10 minute pace. You can catch your breath within about a minute once you reach the top so the runner that you pulled ahead of has no chance to catch you.

You probably don't have that long of hills in xc but you can still lose 5-10 seconds on a hill that you won't be able to make up. Remember, a stronger uphill runner will always outlast a strong downhill runner because you are running for a longer time on the ups compared to the downs. That's why you always run slower on a hilly course.

Just like anything, you have to practice charging the hills and catching your breath. Kind of like doing surges during a race. You will be surprised how fast you can recover after you practice for a while.

Hill sprints and hill intervals.

I don't know, my friend who won the meet did the opposite. She said that most runners will charge up a hill and then relax when they get to the top. She kept her effort constant the whole time and focused on the transitions. Ran 22 on an extremely challenging course and took the win.

I think how you focus on hills probably should be based on your own strengths and weaknesses to some degree, but I can't think of any strengths I have on hills right now hahaha