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.

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.

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.