We all love hills right? I remember training for the 2018 Hastings Half Marathon when my fitness was particularly poor. I only ever ran on the seafront and the minute I reached Queensway I just had to walk, I didn’t have the confidence, strength, of fitness to run the hill.
Since then hills have always been part of my training and I highly recommend you include them in your own schedules too.
I’ll be honest I don’t actually set hill reps that often for my team as I realise the demand on them can increase the risk of injury and it also depends on what the individual runner is training for.
If your goal race is something like Battle 10K then incorporating hill repetitions into your plan is crucial, so when you arrive at the foot of the hill, you don’t have the same confidence meltdown that I had in the 2018 HHM.
Hill Reps offer so many benefits. They can be a strength work out in disguise as you’ll really need to use your muscles a lot more to work against the resistance of the incline.
They can also help your running form, to climb the hill you will have to lift those knees higher off the ground otherwise you’d simply trip over and face plant.
Your cardiovascular fitness should improve too as running up hill won’t allow to generate any free energy, so you’ll be working much harder than if you were doing reps at the track or on a flat surface.
I think the main benefit is mental strength. Hills can be brutal and often the biggest challenge is convincing ourselves that we can keep running. If you do 6-8 reps of a challenging hill this will improve your confidence next time you tackle a hill in a race, after all, in that event, you’ll only need to reach the top of that hill once.
Here are some hill rep sessions you could try to become a better runner and stronger on the inclines.
8 x 2 mins (3 min recovery jog downhill)
20 x 30 Sec Hill Reps ( 0 Second recovery)
6 x Long Hill Reps (recovery downhill)
Kenyan Hill (continuous hill running)
Pyramid Hill Reps
Give them a go and you’ll smash those hills in your upcoming races.
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Excellent insights on hill training! The mental strength aspect you mentioned is often overlooked. Just as gaming platforms like legend link maya link teach players persistence through challenging levels, hills build that same resilient mindset. Start small and trust the process!