Craig Batterham writes:
Hills are hard, they are often seen as the enemy by a runner, an obstacle to overcome and endure, an energy-sapping, speed-killing strain on the legs. They can break your rhythm and ruin any chance you had of setting a new PB but, included as a consistent element of your training, they can help bring a marked improvement in your runs and races.
Personally, when I joined the Ealing Eagles I went a little overboard for someone new to running and joined in both the track and hills sessions. In the first four months I saw a 5% improvement in my 5k and 10k times with each new race yielding a new PB which in retrospect I would credit hills training. This personal improvement lines up with the scientific research carried out by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Following a small hip injury in January I have not been to many at all and my performances and my perceived fitness reflects this, my times have tanked and I do not feel as fit and able as before.
Consistent hill training improves leg muscle strength, develops your cardio-vascular system and your running economy effectively enabling you to go further for longer all for less energy expenditure. It also helps develop a quicker cadence which studies suggest improves your overall speed. Everything you need to get off that plateau or out of those doldrums and start hitting new PBs across all of your distances can be found in hill training and results can be seen in as little as six weeks of consistent training.
If you are not one for including regular strength sessions into your weekly routine, and I’ll admit here I am one of those people, then hills can help fill that void. Running up and down an incline stretches and strengthens tendons, ligaments and muscles in ways running on the flat does not. It can actually provide a more rounded form of strength training by working multiple tendons, ligaments and muscles at once rather than some of the more isolated strength work done at home or in the gym which target smaller muscle groups.
Hills Sessions offered by Ealing Eagles
The club regularly offers hills training sessions every Thursday. In the darker months this is usually at West Walk under the street lights and away from traffic, but right now the sessions are on tour and rotating through Ealing’s local parks. Keep an eye out on the list of weekly training sessions or on Facebook to see where they are heading next. Quite likely one near you. So if you haven’t tried them yet this is a great time to get out and give them a go. Include them in your weekly programme and use then to build a base for the autumn race season.
Warm-ups and cool-downs offered by club coaches are specific to the workout and the session content will have been drawn from a whole range of exercises kept on a coaching database. At times, when there is a specific race coming up like the Ealing Half Marathon, the sessions will be tailored to provide the greatest benefit. The sessions are very inclusive - regardless of individual ability, the coaches set out various intensities, distances or durations for you to select from based on how you’re feeling that particular evening. The nature of the sessions means you will be passing runners on the other side either going up or down and it’s very common to shout words of encouragement to each other.
All you have to do is turn up and run, the easy part. If you can’t make the seasons and want to include hills into your routine but don’t know what to do, then feel free to speak with one of the coaches who should be able to help you with some set-piece exercise suggestions.
Running uphill
Running up hills effectively and efficiently requires different things from you than what you would do on your nice flat long or tempo runs.
When you start uphill shorten your stride length. Don’t try to maintain pace but do try to maintain cadence and rhythm.
If the incline increases take baby steps if necessary whilst maintaining that same cadence and keep the feet close to the ground, don’t try to bound up the hill.
If your breathing quickens too much then you are likely going too fast, too high or striding out too far. Try to bring those under control and your breath will follow.
Keep upright, don’t lean into the hill or lean too far back. Imagine that helium balloon everyone tells you is attached to your head.
Keep the shoulders relaxed, not bunched up around the neck, and use the arms as pendulums to help propel you forward. Pull the elbow back behind you and let the arm swing forward by its self to add extra forward momentum.
Run through the crest of the hill, don’t immediately slow down. Maintain that cadence and rhythm and start to increase the stride length. You’ll soon be accelerating off the top of the hills.
Running downhill
Downhill running is a different animal all together and is a skill that runners should learn unless you are one of the lucky ones who can already run down them with a childlike abandonment and remain injury free.
Keep your feet close to the ground and land lightly whilst maintaining a high cadence rather than increasing stride length which can lead to breaking.
Use your arms for balance, relax the shoulders and maybe hold the arms out slightly to the sides, let gravity pull you down, you dove need the pendulum moving of the arms to drive you anymore.
Stay in control. If you feel you are losing control of your forward momentum shorten the strides and increase the cadence. Once you have control back you can start to open up that stride length.
Taking on the hills in training in a consistent way will also help build mental resistance to running those hills in your other runs or races. Once you realise you can control your pace and breathing to tackle any hill you’ll start to see these inclines in the same way as any other part of the route or course and your confidence in your running will skyrocket.
As the weeks tick by you’ll almost certainly notice that your legs are less sore following a run and that recovery, especially for muscle groups like the quads, is improved. If you race you’ll start to see that you’re passing people on the hills that just overtook you on the flat, and for me at least this leaves a big grin on my face knowing how strong I have become in my own running. If you can do the same downhill then you will, without doubt, start seeing those PBs come rolling in. I hope to see you all at a session in the near future.