Hill reps and/or flat sprints

[MarkyMark]

Over the past few months I have been trying to do a couple of hill sessions per week (but now that mid weeks race have come along this has dropped to one a week). The two session I do are a) shorts hills (x 12 being around 300m long with 30m up) and b) long hills (x4 being around 800m with 150m up). In my mind I see the short hills being the same as a flat 400m rep, whilst the long hill is more like a 1 mile rep.

Should I also being doing some flat ground work if I am wanting to get faster or do hill session give the same benefit as sprint intervals despite the moving speed being slower?

[johnnyb1]

I don't get to do any proper hill training living in Liverpool, but do an interval session once a week and race a fair bit. I don't think it really affects me going uphill, as long as you get some hard running done on the flat.

Lack of descending practice does let me down as I'm much better going up and along, than down.

[Tahr]

I don't think it really affects me going uphill, as long as you get some hard running done on the flat..

I think you might be mistaken there,

The best guy on the road in our club beat me by 2 minutes in a 6.5 mile road race last Tuesday, this Tuesday it was a 4 mile hill race and he was fresh legged while I had done a 7:30 hours BG support run on the Saturday, 20 miles on the bike on Monday and a hour in the pool with the tri club Tuesday morning , so I was pretty heavy legged at the start of the race, it was pretty much all climbing on the outwards leg. I expected to get beat by him easy but I ran past him on the climb and beat him by 40 seconds at the finish with me cruising the last 1.5 miles.

While fast flat running is of benefit you cana beat training on hills for hills IMO.

ATB

Tahr

[TheReverand]

Over the past few months I have been trying to do a couple of hill sessions per week (but now that mid weeks race have come along this has dropped to one a week). The two session I do are a) shorts hills (x 12 being around 300m long with 30m up) and b) long hills (x4 being around 800m with 150m up). In my mind I see the short hills being the same as a flat 400m rep, whilst the long hill is more like a 1 mile rep.

Should I also being doing some flat ground work if I am wanting to get faster or do hill session give the same benefit as sprint intervals despite the moving speed being slower?

I would suggest you might aswell be doing some hard intervals on the flat instead of the first session you mentiond, the second one is more like it.
But to make the first session you mentioned more worthwhile, is it possible you could continue for another minute on the flat once over the top of the hill, so running around 600 in total, just dont do as many reps and keep the recovery constant and as short as you can manage to get through the session

[LissaJous]

Over the past few months I have been trying to do a couple of hill sessions per week (but now that mid weeks race have come along this has dropped to one a week). The two session I do are a) shorts hills (x 12 being around 300m long with 30m up) and b) long hills (x4 being around 800m with 150m up). In my mind I see the short hills being the same as a flat 400m rep, whilst the long hill is more like a 1 mile rep.

Should I also being doing some flat ground work if I am wanting to get faster or do hill session give the same benefit as sprint intervals despite the moving speed being slower?

..keep the recovery constant and as short as you can manage to get through the session

To me, most people's idea of speed work seems to be a confused mixture of
(a) improving work rate (aerobic capacity + intermittent pushing with anaerobic work + short recovery)
(b) leg work (strength and power, ie strength at speed)
Both work to a degree on pushing storage & recovery of relevant energy supplies (you'll know if you have nothing left in your legs at the end of the session, even after 5+ minutes recovery)

My training tends to split these, and my speed work has been more focussed on (a). Intense, short sessions are the key for this. I often keep it low impact with uphill treadmill sessions. I believe there is an argument that the body must work quite differently to adapt (a) compared to (b).

If (a) is improved, then increased fitness naturally leads to (b) being the limiting factor when you go for a sustained, continuous run, hence there should be some leg adaptation which would be specific to the type of terrain you train on, and relevant to you race pace. I have usually boosted this with some weights work.

Very short, very fast uphill sprints might sound like a way to develop your legs, but by design are nothing like race pace and hence differ in technique. Meanwhile, if it's steep then a long (3-4 minute) interval ends up very close to your steady pace anyway (so it won't do any harm ~ last year I got to do some 4000m altitude training, so yes I did uphill mile reps, 20 minutes each one!)

And so to answer the question on flat speed work (or any runs that involve fast-ish road sections): if you do this with good technique, and on a hard surface, you will feel the calf adaptation especially, but also right through the legs and core. This will help you immensely in any running, and build up physical resilience. I try to maintain my flat speed at some 'acceptable' level from quite early on in my year, and possibly lose a little flat speed as the year goes on, having switched my sessions on pushing speed to uphill. At an earlier stage of fitness, these uphill sessions would not be so effective as they would be too hard (trying to work (a) and (b) simultaneously).

Nevertheless, any work on aerobic capacity (etc) is extremely transferrable to different gradients or even sports, and as with outright strength, it lasts quite well, whereas out-and-out speed & strength endurance will fade quite quickly if you stop training them, and will be more specific to the training gradient.

[TheReverand]

so you don't agree Lisa that to obtain the best results from any such interval session on the roads, recovery should be kept consistent and as low as possible, i.e. if you are doing 10 reps that take 2 minutes each to complete at a consistently high workrate/intensity, you should also be aiming at keeping the recovery the same, maybe at 1min between reps- or whatever is manageable to enable you to get through the reps at consistently high workrate?

[LissaJous]

so you don't agree Lisa that to obtain the best results from any such interval session on the roads, recovery should be kept consistent and as low as possible, i.e. if you are doing 10 reps that take 2 minutes each to complete at a consistently high workrate/intensity, you should also be aiming at keeping the recovery the same, maybe at 1min between reps- or whatever is manageable to enable you to get through the reps at consistently high workrate?

I definitely do agree!

Anytime you keep the recovery short you are working more towards my (a), IMO.

Are you asking because I have mentioned continuous training?

[Mike T]

Do the long hills and flat fast stuff - the only reason for doing short hills is if you do not have access to long ones. Variation in speed/gradient will make you a more injury resistant runner - as will drills/leg strength exercises.

[MarkyMark]

Thanks for the advice. I'm aware when doing the short hill reps that I am turning my legs over at a good high rate, although the speed is obviously less that what I would do on the flat. My general ethos is that if a want to run fast I need train fast. Earlier in the year (when the weather was poor) I was doing reps on the treadmill but more recently I have been doing the hill sessions which feel good in terms of the effort I put in but I have been conscious that this might not be giving the best fast effort training. I will take your advice on board and do some flat rep sessions.


LissaJous what kind leg strength (weights) work do you do?

[TheReverand]

I definitely do agree!

Anytime you keep the recovery short you are working more towards my (a), IMO.

Are you asking because I have mentioned continuous training?

i cant remember lisa, its been a long day