I recently moved to the beach and began teaching and coaching cross country. No hills, nor extended bridges, exist within an hour of us. Our state course does have a few small hills, and I'd like for us to qualify someday. Does anyone have any ideas on how to combat this problem?
Most beaches have some kind of dunes.
Make them run in the water.
If you could only find deep sand to run in. Any idea where deep sand might be?
High Intensity Interval Training. Doesn't even have to be all running either.
Parking garages.
No parking garages and no dunes. I like the idea of running in water. I hadn't even considered that. We have run on the beach, in high sand, but it doesn't feel like hills. We have begun running more anaerobic runs - high intensity. Thanks for the suggestions.
Any more?
I think it's just the specific muscular strength hill running seems to provide. Would biking provide that strength? What about even higher mileage in our next buildup?
purchase several tons of dirt.
build hills
Take a 45lb plate from the schools weight room.
Loop a rope through it.
Make a couple of loops on the other end for a shoulder harness.
Drag THAT through the sand on the beach.
Run Bleachers.
Find an apartment building and bound up the stairs
Build a spiral ascending path with a slide to go down. Benefits of uphills without the destructive aspects of downhills.
Move.
Uphill running engages different muscles. Emphasis shifts away from hamstrings to calves and quads.
So we'll need to strengthen those muscles to handle increased load.
Ex: Endless squats, lunges, squat jumps, split squats.
Workout: Tempo efforts (ie: 3x5min) or cruise intervals preceded by some intense combination of the aforementioned.
hills are pretty useless
Do surges in runs where you would likely do hills. Do bounding instead of strides 25-50% of the time.
Jim Ryun was pretty good and Kansas is pretty flat.
Treadmills have incline adjustment capabilities