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

Your body type simply might not favor hill running - you'll probably never be a complete waif. I'm a heavier runner and feel like I struggle with cross country races that require frequent changes of pace. I'm better on courses with fewer turns and fewer abrupt hills. Sounds like you might be similar.

Dont over complicate a easy problem to be solved.

Balance into your workout routine a rolling hill run , find a loop course or out and back that keeps you moving on rolling hills for 1 hour plus. Charge the hill not all out but no talking steady running , maintain over the crest , roll the downhill , not out of control but rolling , ease up on the flat sections , not jogging , start the hill ten meters out before you start climbing as to have some effort going into the hill. After a few runs you will start to gain a rhythm for that hilly course. This should not be a crushing run , hard effort yes. Summer months once a week , cross country run it on non racing weeks , post x-country back to weekly , it will help your track strength to fit it in when can during track.

Coach may have hill repeats etc. , this does not substitute his workouts its just an add-on for building hill endurance and strength.

xenonscreams wrote:

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

Of course she is going to tell you her effort was constant. She wants to keep winning!! If you truly keep the effort constant, you will be going up most hills VERY slowly. It's more likely she is a strong hill runner and those other runners aren't "relaxing", they are just taking longer to recover at the top of the hill.

Balance - Definitely do some work on the wobble boards

Hills - Do NOT be afraid to run your tempo runs and intervals through the hills. Within a month of doing so, I went from slogging the hills to being able to efficiently ease up them.

xenonscreams wrote:

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

You're a "rhythm runner" aren't you? In that case it would make sense to keep the effort the same the whole way, in which case your strength would be faster transitions and downhills.

I on the other hand have very big leg muscles and can power up the hills in short, hard, surges and it doesn't really take anything out of me. In fact even when trying to run fast I almost prefer a couple small hills because it varies the exact muscles used, and if a course is perfectly flat it feels like I haven't used my legs to the fullest. Other people have expressed the same feeling.

Treadmill running with incline.

lets play leapfrog wrote:

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.

I disagree with this completely. Yes uphills take longer, but anyone going too hard, for 10 seconds or whatever, is going to get into trouble and crash. An even effort is the best.

A good strategy is to lose a little distance to a better uphill going up, catch up at the crest, and then leave that person in the dust flying down. Once you learn the downhills, you can coast down them at very fast speeds and recover while you're doing it. No one is saying to be lousy going up, but most people of a given ability run up hills at about the same speeds, and the biggest differences can be in the downhills, because most runners are much less prepared for the downhills than they are for the ups.

Ron Daws wrote an excellent chapter about hill training in his book "The Self Made Olympian", and his training partner Steve Hoag does post here occasionally.

x - I kind of disagree that the course we ran is short, explosive hills - in my mind it is one k downhill over bumpy grass and some root-ridden trail and then one k up bumpy grass, with a long portion on a gravelly "road". It's basically half down and then half up. So basically 4 minutes down and 4 minutes up (give or take)

Even though yesterday wasn't much of a race for me, I'm MUCH better on uphills than most people and I'm pretty much a forefoot striking shuffler, so I don't think my form is doing me any favors. So, I think it's a mental thing that I do better - remember, it hurts for everyone going up hill and instead of "exploding" up the hill, it been better for me to keep a steady cadence and keep grinding. Almost unconsciously, I actually relax my breathing going up hill (I have no idea why), but once I hit the top, I can grab a deeper breath and go. There's also a little down hill just past the 1k and you can use that to get some momentum for the next climb. It's only the last little rise that is steep, but you've been going up for at least a half mile by that point, so it feels bad.

As for the club workouts, I'm sure they are effective (and wish I could go), but perhaps the best thing is to do lots of hilly runs on your other days, preferably on trails, but roads will work. Just learning how to roll up and down hills will help you.

If it's any consolation, you will rarely run this type of course other than the two races the club does per year. But Lincoln Park (Sundodger) is fairly similar, with less gravel. Nationals is very unlikely to be 1k down/up - ever.

xenonscreams wrote:

People I can outrun on the track or on flat road courses destroy me on hilly courses. I want to change that. My coach says I don't have a lot of "lift." I will obviously keep talking to him about this but I was curious if anyone had anything to add besides the super obvious things like "run more hills."

One of my teammates said it's more about the transitions than the hills (and she won the meet today so I kinda trust her opinion) but I still feel abnormally slow on hills.

I haven't read the whole thread, so maybe some one suggested this...

Perhaps try some long intervals on the treadmill, at a good incline?

I grew up in the mountains, often running up and down hill, so it was never a problem for me.

I had one particular run that was about 7 miles up hill, at various grades, some so steep you'd feel like you were running-climbing in slow motion, lol. But, like anything, the more you do it, the better you get.

Good Luck!

I'm surprised that youre asking about this in here, seeing as you know what the problem is and how to deal with it.

1. Of course hill repeats is a workout in itself, its not like strides. Its hard.

2. You struggle not with the long hills, but the short and explosive ones, that means do short and explosive hill repeats.

Simple as that.

J.R. wrote:

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

What does "well" mean?

Interesting. I want to get on the A team though and my only shot is to run well at PNTF hahaha.

I should note that it feels totally muscular to me. It's not like I get to the top of a hill and I need to catch my breath or anything, it's more like (even when I try to stay steady) my legs are burning so much they feel nonfunctional.

I still don't see ULW the same way you do, but maybe reframing it in my mind will actually help (1K down 1K up actually sounds a lot better to me than the way I think about ULW).

I frequently run loops around Ravenna/Cowen though which is basically the same. In about five minutes I'm going to meet up with one of the other girls and we're going to stick an easy ULW loop in our run, so maybe that's something I can do once in a while, at least to get to know the course better.

bump for the bumps

RunWild wrote:

Balance - Definitely do some work on the wobble boards.

Or boss balls. You can see some examples in Mo & Galen's workout videos.

Barakus Obama wrote:

What does "well" mean?

What does "does" mean?

This was how Bill Rodgers did it.

Hills are all quads and arms. Do long hilly runs and hill repeats. When going uphill, fix your eyes no further than 3-5 feet ahead of you. Chop your stride and work those arms.

OP, try taking 3 gels on every hill. Keep them in your fanny pack.

Hi, update. Going to do more hill workouts at the next few practices after talking to my coach, so that's cool. He calls that the short-term solution. Long-term (probably won't do anything for this season) is gonna be not being so goddamn horizontal, but I'm yet to talk to him about specifically how to accomplish that.

I think the mental stuff listed in here will help regardless and I'll try to work on my form going down hills since the only reason I'm not good at them is because I'm pretty uncoordinated. I think I might be able to accomplish that without doing anything stupid on my own by just focusing on my form when I run down a hill on my normal runs, which I can be pretty lazy about. I've been doing lots of balance stuff but I think I'll just keep it up, not sure how long it takes for that to really impact my running.

Re: muscles, I have gigantic man-quads, like ridiculously big solid chunks of muscle for thighs. They are kind of scary-looking. I just don't know if I'm actually using them correctly when I run up hills. That actually seems to be a pretty big trend for me, I am strong, I just don't actually use all of my muscles correctly when I run. My guess is that there are plyos in my future.