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.