johnsjar

Last Sunday I did not run because of the 5Peaks trail race, which was a hill training session if ever there was one so I am counting that as a hill training session. I will post pictures and a breif commentary about that race later on but for now I’d like to report on today’s hill training session.

I went to the same old hill, a 500 meter, 12% grade asphalt hill in the river valley at the crack of noon so the heat would be intense. I like to say I run at this time in order to become used to running in the heat of summer rather than say something like …”I’m frikken lazy and I slept in till 10 AM,…”, which although true, doesn’t sound nearly as heroic.

So I began with a very slow 2 km warm up run on the flat around the Lion’s campground in Devon’s North Saskatchewan River valley. No, there were no lions, but there was one leopard, and a bunny.

After the warm up I stopped and stretched thoroughly before my planned 4 repeats. I ran my first repeat in 4:34 to the top, and 2:45 to the bottom. I rested for 2 or 4 minutes and then ran my 2nd repeat in 4:29 to the top and 2:39 to the bottom. My next repeat was 4:55 to the top and 2:47 to the bottom. My 4th repeat was 4:30 to the top and 2:45 to the bottom. I didn’t stop at the bottom for a rest since I wanted to run onwards for a 1.5 km loop on the flat then immediately tackle a 5th repeat without resting to more closely mimic race conditions. That hill repeat took me 5:00 to the top and 2:50 to the bottom, after which I continued on for a 2.5 km cool down.

I stretched again after and also took to the foam roller when I got home.

There seems to be little difference in my downhill times (about 10 seconds max) no matter what stride length I use or how fast I think I’m running. A short stride with faster cadence or a long stride with slower cadence seems to make no difference. If anything, the longer stride seems to be a wee bit faster, but also it is more prone to slipping out of control so that I end up having to slow down by heel striking.

The uphill times are clearly different (closer to 30 seconds difference) but that is simply the result of being just too darned tired to push the pace. Some of the variation is the result of sort of falling into a daze and not focusing on technique, but largely as the number of repeats increase, the energy level goes down.

So the total run today including hill repeats was just over 11 km. Five of those kilometers were on the hill, 2.5 going up and 2.5 coming down. For me, coming down is easier in terms of getting enough oxygen, but way harder than the uphills in terms of stride control, shock absorption, and so on. My quads and other downhill muscle groups are really going to let me know how they feel tomorrow.

I really like hill training which is why I approach it with so much dedication and seriousness. I like it because I know it is taking me a quantum leap ahead in my ability to run trails. I’ll be talking about my last trail race and how I smoked everyone (that I met) on the uphills, because of my hill training, but I got whacked on the downhills starting about 3/4 of the way through the race. Yes, even those very few hill training sessions I did before the race helped me out a lot. I am quite optimistic what continued hill training will do for me.

Today’s hill training session consisted of a 2 km warm up followed by 4 hill climbs and of course, 4 downhills and ended with a 2 km cool down for a total of 8 km. The hill was the same as last week, a 500 meter hill with a 12% grade. My times were a bit better today. The 4 uphill segments were 4:54 – 4:53 – 4:40 and the last slowed down quite a bit at 5:10 partly because it was my 4th try but also because I tackled it after a 500 meter flat bit just to see how that would feel. The first three hill runs were separated by a 3 or 4 minute rest before the next set, but after a similar rest, on the 4th I decided to try running a good pace for 500 meters on the flat before hitting the hill. The corresponding downhills were 2:44 – 2:47 – 2:43 and 2:55, again a bit slower for that 4th downhill. I noticed that if I shortened my stride and quickened my cadence (2:47), I was a bit slower than if I lengthened my stride and lowered my cadence (2:43) but the difference is not that great over 500 meters. I don’t really know yet what to make of that or what it means. I guess I have to find the most comfortable pace and stride length by how I feel because the times are not all that different.

The uphills seemed a bit easier than last week and I am finding that the ideal stride length is getting easier to recognize – and the same can be said for the downhill runs. I feel that the longer the stride length, the faster I can go either uphill or downhill. Shortening the stride and trying to make up for that by increasing the cadence doesn’t seem to work quite as well or be quite as fast. Also, especially on the uphills, the longer my stride the softer I land and the closer my feet are to the ground. If I go with too long of a stride though, the benefits disappear as I begin to use too much power in what seems to be an inefficient way. The same can be said of the downhills although it feels very different in terms of the amount of effort and oxygen I use than in the uphills. I need to have the longest stride possible so that my feet barely leave the ground without letting my heels drag. I let gravity do as much work as possible. The longer I have both feet in the air the less energy I seem to use. Finding the right balance requires me to go fast enough but not so fast that I lose control and begin to break too hard. You don’t want to be breaking, and above all, you never want to heel strike.

So again, I don’t quite know what to make of all this, but I hope it helps me in my upcoming trail race this Saturday. I will not be running again until then in order for me to heal up from this training session plus I have karate Tuesday night which is always a killer on the legs anyway. That’s why I won’t be running again until the race.

After the race I will be back to my normal training sessions but one day a week will be devoted to intensive hill training. I think I need to run that whole river valley trail system because there are a lot of really tough hills there and that would also be a more realistic hill training session and a change of pace from my regular flat road runs that I seem to have been stuck with these last few years.

I don’t think I will be hill training or even running on the Sunday following Saturday’s 16 km trail race but the next Sunday I think I will measure and tackle a different hill. The one I have in mind is not quite as steep, I think, but it is 1 km long. Did I mention I liked running?

I actually like hill training so far.

Today I went back to the same hill as last Sunday but I decided to try running the entire hill. The hill is 500 meters long with a 12% grade and is asphalt. I started with a 2 km on the flat warm up, followed by a slow and careful stretch of all the relevant bits of my anatomy. I can’t stress the importance of a proper warm up and then a stretch before you begin serious hill training.

I decided to do 3 sets, where one set is running up the hill and down again for a total of 1 km. My first run up that hill was tentative. I reached the top in 5:48. Immediately after reaching the top of the hill, I turned around, restarted my stopwatch, and ran back down again (no rest). I got to the bottom in 3:08. On the bottom I had a 3 or 4 minute rest before the next set. The other two sets in order were 4:56 to the top, 2:59 to the bottom and the last set was 4:49 to the top and 2:47 to the bottom.

As you can see, each set was faster than before. After the third set I ran another easy cool down on the flat of 2 km for a total workout today of about 7 km.

Obviously, on the way up I was pushing off on the balls of my feet and also landing on them too. I was avoiding hunching over since this compresses my stomach and diaphragm, robbing me of oxygen. This will happen as you get tired and must be consciously avoided. On the way down I began getting used to landing on the balls of my feet so really there is no difference between up and down hills in that respect, or maybe only minor differences.

The easiest difference to notice on the downhill was the foot sliding forward inside my running shoes because of the foot strike on the balls of my feet rather than the heel. However, this was not a problem. I imagine if this went on for much longer or was repeated too frequently (heavy emphasis on imagine), that maybe blisters might appear, but they did not in today’s workout. The other item that is worthy of note was the tremendous difference between a front foot strike on the balls of the feet and a heel strike. I experimented briefly with a heel strike. Very briefly, because the brute force and shock of the heel landing was so much greater than a soft, ball of the foot landing – that it just blew me away. The best analogy I can come up with on short notice is that a heel strike is like hitting your heel with a 175 pound sledge hammer swinging wildly (or whatever weight you are plus the acceleration of gravity and your speed). A ball strike is more like a gentle push. Not only is the hammer strike avoided, but whatever forces are happening are distributed over a much longer period of time and so are much softer. This is because of the rolling effect of the ball strike which absorbs and deflects the forces rather than a heel strike which stops them all instantly, like a bullet hitting a steel plate. The braking effect of a heel strike is probably why I have been having so much fatigue and injury in my previous trail runs. I just did not pay attention to my downhill technique and although often I landed on the ball of my foot going downhill, all too frequently I was heel striking. If you actually pay attention to this in your own hill training, you can immediately see the great difference in shock value between ball and heel strikes. You can see and feel the difference. You know that heel strikes stop you dead in your tracks – then you sort of arc over all stiff legged like a pole vault as you are pulled downhill by gravity. No wonder I was getting trashed so quickly on the downhills. It’s true that you can go faster in certain downhill situation with a heel strike, but it’s murdering you and chances are your pace on other portions of a course will suffer. So in the long run, it is better to go a bit slower and stay in control.

One other aspect of running downhill is cadence. Like running uphill, your cadence is quicker than on the flat but for different reasons. Running up hill, your cadence is greater (or should be) because you want to reduce the anaerobic effort and stay in the aerobic zone. So your pace is slower than on the flat but your effort is the same. Or that is the ideal goal to strive for. If your stride is too long you risk pulling the muscle you are pushing off with, so you have to shorten your stride. To compensate, you increase your cadence – still your pace will be slower. But in running downhill the cadence increases and the stride shortens not because you lack the strength for a longer stride, but because you want to stay in control so that you don’t begin to heel strike and thus have to begin braking your descent in an inefficient and dangerous manner. Still, your stride will be linger than on the uphill. You do not want to lean over backwards and you do not want to heel strike nor go so fast that you have to begin the braking effort. So rather than one large and destructive heel brake, you hold back gently all the time. Today’s effort made me think that I would have sore muscles the next day because of the extra work that the muscles on the top of my foot leading up into the front of my lower shin muscles were doing as they helped me to stay in control of the fast downhill without a heel strike. I guess I won’t know that until tomorrow morning but I am sure that they were doing extra work they were not accustomed to today.

Again, I decided to keep the workout relatively short today so as to not over do a new thing and get injured. But I am getting a feel for it – something you will never get from just reading about it – and I think I did fairly well.

It should help me in my trails runs. My next trail run is July 17th and I am sure this will make a huge difference. I’ll let you all know. I do not want to push hill training too much until after that race since it would be too easy for me to trash myself so I will do only one more similar hill training workout next Sunday and leave it at that until after the race. But after the race I have a half marathon on the trails in September with a lot of steep hills in Devon and I will absolutely be doing a lot more hill training. The last thing I have to say today is that although I did not go far nor fast, I can sure feel the effects of today’s hill training session. If you want to do some hill training, make absolutely sure you do not do too much on the first (or the second) day.

I bit the bullet today and decided to tackle hill training head on so I went to the river valley to the hill I had measured the other day. The hill has a 12% grade and is 500 meters long, or at least the part I’m interested in is that long. There is a cross walk half way up conveniently located at the 250 meter mark. I was pretty sure I would not try to go all the way up so I stuck with half way. My regular training routes are all totally flat so I have had absolutely NO hill training before. Because of that I suffer a lot in my trail races where there are lots of hills. Up hills are certainly a challenge but they are nothing compared to the downhill segments. Going down hill is always what destroys my runs.

I did a lot of research into hill running on various running sites because I wanted to do it right.

The basic idea in hill running is to not try to maintain your flat pace going up hill, but to maintain an equal effort going up hill. This means shortening your stride and increasing your cadence. Theoretically, your heart rate should be the same whether you are going up hill or on the flat. It follows that your speed will be very much slower going up hill. If you tackle a hill and try to maintain your pace, lactic acid will build up in your legs too soon and you’ll never get rid of it during that race. Save the lactic acid buildup until the last quarter of your race. Easier said than done, hence the practice on the hill.

When running uphill, your posture should not lean way over, but try to keep your ears, hips, and ankles in as straight a line as possible.

Running down hill may seem easier and faster at first, but trust me, they will kill you. Using the correct running technique going down hill is extremely important because of the increased shock and energy dissipation your body is subjected to. It depends on the steepness of the grade. Roads are rarely designed with a grade of more than 10 %, but trails are a different matter. Some trails have you going up or down grades of 60% or more. The trick is to remain upright as when running up hill, but sort of perpendicular to the road surface too. Never land on your heels, always land on your forefoot. Landing on your heels puts the breaks on your downward path which roughly translates into a tenfold increase in the destructive shock your body has to dissipate for no good reason. (I made that number up, but I’ll bet it is much higher than that, depending on your speed). All that breaking energy of your massive frame has to be absorbed by your leg bones, and your muscles, especially your quads. This is not good and can be very painful, cripplingly so for may days after.

So the key is to avoid breaking, land on your forefoot, and control your speed. Again this takes practice.

All these thoughts were in my mind as I ran my 2 km warm up on the flat. After my warm up I stopped and stretched my warm muscles very carefully and thoroughly. I looked up at the hill before me. The hill looked back at me and scowled.

I had a stopwatch so I could have a rough idea of how long it would take me to run up as opposed to down. Next time I need to take with me a better way of recording my times. Glancing at my stopwatch I noted that the time going up averaged 2:30 while going down averaged a minute less. I need to be more accurate in my records for next time so I think I’ll use my voice memo feature on my iPhone.

I went up that hill 4 times, and of course I came back down 4 times as well. No really. I did so. So that would be 1 kilometer up hill and 1 kilometer down hill, then I ran a 1 kilometer cool down for a total run today of 5 km or so.

My proudest achievement today was not that I ran hills. It’s that I had the discipline to not over do it and stop at the right time. There is such a difference in the muscles used between up and down hills, but for me down hills are what I am really hoping to improve upon and they should help me strengthen my quads.

Hill training. It’s about time I did it. Must keep it up and increase the effort slowly with the discipline to avoid injury. Because I’m an idiot who usually doesn’t know when to stop.

Has anyone ever succeeded in finding an online calorie burning list that shows how many calories burned when you run an 11 minute mile? Mind you, I haven’t searched extensively, but the online sources I use list a 10 minute mile then an 11.5 minute mile but nothing in between. Does that mean that running is a quantum event and one can only run either 10 or 11.5 but nothing in between?

So I just err on the side of recording less burned calories than I actually burned. I use the 11.5 minute mile setting, even though I ran an 11 minute mile over 11.35 kilometers today which is a 6:44 pace – to stick with the metric system. I just have to dabble in the American system so I can easily and quickly find an estimate of the calories I have burnt. I simply must look for a metric equivalent online.

Anyway, the trail run today was hot as usual because I am running in the hottest part of the day in order to get acclimated to the heat for my upcoming race July 17th. The wild roses are blooming profusely and the fragrance is totally overpowering. It’s almost like a bunch of glass perfume bottles smashed on the floor in a cosmetic shop, but without that toxic chemical artificial stink. The fragrance surrounds you as even though it is extremely nice, it can be so strong as one runs through hundreds of meters of it that it is a bit overwhelming.

Yesterday, I went to the river valley during a thunderstorm and scoped out some hills I could use for hill training. I tried to check out the actual trails but they were way too muddy for my purposes so I resorted to measuring the asphalt road leading down into the valley. It has an average 12% grade for a slope (pretty steep) and it has a crosswalk conveniently located halfway up. The total distance up the hill is 500 meters, but thanks to the crosswalk I can choose to begin with half that.

Anyway, I am going to go to various online source to read up on hill training because that is what I need. I can’t do too much because my next race is too close, but I can, after that race, make hill training a priority to prepare for my half marathon trail run in Devon’s North Saskatchewan River Valley in September.

I’ll be posting more about hill training later.