I'm in California, nearest hills are about forty five minutes away driving. My freshman year(last year) I wasn't a very good hill runner, and when we traveled to the big meets I would get beaten by kids who I could beat on our flat league courses. Are there workouts(I have weights) that I can do to improve my hill running so I can be better prepared for the bigger meets?
Treadmill bro. Inclines are your friend.
Once a week, drive to the hills. Treadmill on incline if you have access to it. Look for bridges/rivers/parking garages to find solid hills in flatland. You would probably get some advantages from running while dragging tires/parachute, etc.
Personally, I would drive to the area around the hill and do the workout around there, and just do several hard repeats of the hill once the main workout is completed. In my opinion this can only really be done if you are doing a workout that doesn't require super stringent timing (e.g. tempo, fartlek, threshold stuff) so that you can get away with being off of the track.
flatgrounded wrote:
I'm in California, nearest hills are about forty five minutes away driving. My freshman year(last year) I wasn't a very good hill runner, and when we traveled to the big meets I would get beaten by kids who I could beat on our flat league courses. Are there workouts(I have weights) that I can do to improve my hill running so I can be better prepared for the bigger meets?
Run stadium steps. Find an overpass somewhere, and use it.
OTTAWAKID, do you mean Ottawa, Kansas? I'm from northeast Kansas and I'm racing there next weekend.
I also live in a pancake flat area with no hills. At least twice a month I'll do something like repeat 200's where I'll skip fast across the field after each one then recover for 60 sec. or so. Another variation is where I'll do an 800 alternating running/skipping for 200 meters, finishing with a skipping 200.