The British version of runners world recently did an expose on the benefits of hill running. They suggest that hill running strengthens tendons and ligaments, reduces the risk of injury and improves overall running form. Most of us these days will incorporate some kind of strength training when we go to the gym and lift weights. The problem is that while these exercises do increase strength and muscular power, they do it in isolation of your running, focusing on individual joints and small sets of muscles.

Hill sessions, in contrast, force the muscles in your hips, legs, ankles and feet to contract in a coordinated fashion while supporting your full body weight, just as they have to during normal running. In addition, on uphill sections your muscles contract more powerfully than usual because they are forced to overcome gravity to move you up the hill. The result is more power, which in turn leads to longer, faster running strides.

Are you still not sold on running hills? The Karolinska Institute in Sweden carried out a study to see what the benefits of hill running were. One major study carried out on marathon runners discovered that after 12 weeks of twice-weekly hill sessions, the athletes’ running economy had improved by three per cent. Although the subjects were trained runners, that improvement would still have helped them clip as much as two minutes off a 10-mile time or six minutes off a marathon.

Other research, carried out by Dr Bengt Saltin, discovered that runners who trained on hills have much higher concentrations of aerobic enzymes – the chemicals which allow your muscles to function at high intensity for long periods without fatigue – in their quadriceps muscles than those who did all their running on flat terrain. Heightened aerobic power in your quads gives you improved knee lift while running and also accelerates each leg forward more quickly as you run, which improves your speed.

Those who run on hills have also been shown to be less likely to lose fitness when they take time off from training. And many scientists believe that hill training can improve the elasticity of muscles, tendons and ligaments, allowing these tissues to carry out more work with less effort and fatigue.

The following are three types of hill exercises that can be added to any running workout.

1.    The Basic Hill Interval. Add a set of hill running intervals (anywhere from 3-7 repetitions, ranging from 50 to 800 meters in distance), at a slow to moderate pace. This can be done as part of any run. During your run, you simply run up some hills. The pace is not a sprint or hard effort at all, and the point of doing such a set of intervals is to develop specific upper leg strength that develops the muscle used to lift the knees. Additionally, keep your hips forward and drive off of the back of your leg as your opposite knee is lifted high. There is sometimes a tendency to slouch or hunch forward the shoulders. This happens particularly if you are feeling fatigue, either in general or from the workout itself. Be sure to keep this from happening by maintaining a ‘proud’ form throughout the intervals.

2.    Hill Sprints. These are short but intense efforts on steep hills. Start with a few intervals of 8 to 10 seconds each, then very gradually increase repetitions and durations. When executing hill sprints, each stride should be strong. Focus on a powerful movement that brings your knees up as you drive hard off of the back of your opposite leg. The key here is to straighten the leg that is doing the driving. This movement translates into one thing: Power. If you find yourself slowing considerably or feeling quite fatigued, you have done enough repetitions.

3.    Hill Bounding. On a gentle hill, using your body as resistance by bounding as high as possible. There is little forward momentum needed here, as the point is to gain vertically more than horizontally. By landing on the ball of one’s foot, this action in turn forces the runner’s ankle to increase in flexibility and power, both up and down. It also strengthens leg muscles similarly to plyometric exercises. The number of repetitions, like the hill sprints, can be determined by performance during the intervals: If you begin to feel tired or your execution of the action begins to wain, it is most likely time to move on to a cool down in your workout.

All I can say is I hope to see some of you out on the hills in the coming weeks before the USA’s biggest 15km, the Gate River Run.

Happy Running! 

http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/general/everything-you-need-to-know-about-hill-training/159.html

Bail and Trail

Randy A. is on a quest to qualify for Boston. This is his latest blog posting. Check it out below or go to his blog page at : http://bostonorbust330.wordpress.com/

Just like the catchy song from the ‘80s band called “Europe” (insert drum roll here):  “It’s the final countdown!” in my marathon training.  Only 34 days remain until my date with destiny at the Tallahassee Marathon on Feb. 7.   I am in the midst of the most important weeks of my training program and everything is going disturbingly well.

Why do I say “disturbingly” well?  Because it all seems too easy.  I’m following Coach Paul McRae’s carefully crafted training plan, I’ve remained injury-free and illness-free for months even after significantly increasing my mileage (Did I just jinx myself?), and I’m seeing dramatic improvement in my performance.  After 30 years as a competitive runner, it’s about time that I achieved this “Duh!” moment – train properly, race smart, eat sensibly, and see the desired results – go figure!  It’s not rocket science and yet somehow I did it every way BUT that way for my entire competitive running career – relying on the invincibility of youth (for as long as it lasted up to my early 30’s), then relying on cross training (swimming, tennis, and rowing) as a substitute for proper running training through my 30’s and into my early 40’s, and then just plain struggling for the past few years with the challenge of aging, recurring job transitions, weight gain, high stress, low mileage, and little cross training.  Something had to give, so I figured I would do it the “right way” this time just to “see how the other side lives,” and now I wish I could reclaim those 30 misguided years and start from scratch.

Alek and I did some great training while we were on our family vacation on a Caribbean cruise during the last week of December.  We did all of our mileage on treadmills, but it felt great to run every day at or close to marathon race pace (and I didn’t feel worn down at all – catching up on my sleep definitely helped).  I ran a respectable 40 miles during our 8-day trip (Alek ran 68!), but I also felt a little apprehensive about what was in store at the end of the week:  my first 20-mile training run – ever!  But before I describe that training milestone, I should mention two other training milestones.  My mileage for 2009 was 1080 miles, which is my first 1000-mile year since moving to Florida in 2006 and, more significantly, my highest annual mileage since 1999 (which was the year I ran Boston).  In addition, my mileage for December was 133, which was my highest monthly mileage since 1999.  Unlike 1999, however, these miles weren’t largely “junk” miles – they were all run below, at, or slightly above marathon race pace, which really seems to have made a difference in my speed and endurance.

As for the “Big 2-0” (the 20-mile training run), I never dreamed of doing such a training run until joining this program (my previous long run was 16 miles several years ago and I hurt like hell during and after that run).  Even when I coached a charity marathon team five years ago, I supervised my runners’ 20-mile training run as part of their marathon training but still never dreamed of doing that distance myself (unless it was en route to completing a marathon race).  To add more challenge to my ambitious 20-mile undertaking on Sunday, the weather was incredibly cold – the thermometer was pinned at 33 degrees for the entire run, with a wind chill that put things in the not-so-toasty mid-20’s.  The only other time in my life that I had run close to that distance under those conditions was the Philadelphia Marathon in 2000 (it was 38 degrees and I dropped out at mile 14).

But wait – there’s more.  I ran the first 15 miles of this 20-mile training run by myself, which raised the challenge bar a little more.  My trusty Garmin watch was great company, though, as I was relieved to see how I was nailing almost all of the middle miles of the run at an 8:40 pace and it felt very comfortable (earlier this year, an 8:40 pace was a challenging pace for me for a 7-mile training run).  Even after starting slowly in this 20-miler to allow myself time to warm up in the frigid weather, and slowing down slightly with good conversation during the last 5 miles, I still managed a 2:58 for the 20 miles (8:57 pace), which put me on track to run about a 3:58 marathon that day, which is faster than 4 of my 21 marathon RACES in the past 20 years.  And this was merely a training run, without the crowds of fellow runners and spectators, and without sucking down a gel or other energy aid regularly throughout the run.  I went light on hydration and energy refueling during this training run to see how I would feel and I felt really good.  Of course, it will hurt much more to hold an 8:00 pace on race day for that distance, but that’s where the “race-day intangibles” come into play:  getting propelled by a healthy dose of good old-fashioned adrenaline from the electric “game day” atmosphere on marathon morning, ingesting copious amounts of high-octane energy drinks, gels, and chews throughout the race, and enjoying the pacing services of my relentless coach for the day, Alek (who will shout in my ear incessantly that I’m a slow, cowardly sloth while he runs next to me effortlessly for the entire second half of the race). With all that good karma on my side, the elusive Boston-qualifying time of 3:30 should be within my grasp.

Perhaps most encouraging in the wake of my 20-miler was that my legs weren’t sore later that day, or the next day, or the day after that.  Huh?  Can you say that again in my good ear?  I had to pinch myself to make sure that my muscles and nerves were still working.  How could I have run that obscene distance at that respectable pace under those nasty conditions and not feel like I had been beaten to a pulp with baseball bats by a gang of hoodlums?  To drive home my point, on the day after my 20-miler, I ran a two-mile shake-out run at an 8:26 pace and it felt great.  I could have danced all night.  So, above all else, the quality and quantity of training that I have done since August has produced one extremely valuable quality in me – the ability to recover quickly, both during and after a race, which is something that I have never experienced in my competitive running career.  Prior to this year, I always paid dearly during and after my races as a pupil of the “wing it” school of moronic distance running training.  But those 30 years of ultimate human suffering (like the torture Wesley endured on the life suction pump in the classic movie, “Princess Bride”) helped build my character, and almost killed me in the process.  If I had a dollar for every minute that I spent as a patient in a medical tent after a marathon, I would be filthy rich.

I just hope that this surreal sense of invincibility lasts for the Tallahassee Marathon.  I keep expecting to wake up from this euphoric state and see these delusions of grandeur dissolve instantaneously, just as one loses the thread of a dream as soon as the alarm clock pierces the morning silence.  As far as I can tell, though, the “signpost up ahead” bears the name of the street where I live, and is not the detour exit ramp for “The Twilight Zone.”