The evil hills!

JenBrown0210

I ran my first 5k on Saturday. My goals were to not come in last and to be under 35 minutes and to not finish last! I made both those goals. There is a huge hill at first. It tuckered me out and I had a hard time getting into the run. My legs hurt so bad (they still hurt today). I have decided that I need to work on my hill running. I am currently doing Insanity. I workout out Monday through Saturday. I run Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday (those sre double workout days). I'm thinking Saturday would be my day to run the hills (I am just going to run the course that I did Saturday).

What would you recommend to improve my hill skills? Is only running hills once a week enough along with the other training I am doing? I plan to run another race in September. For that race I want to be under 30 minutes.

Thanks in advanced! ~Jen

BrianSharpe

Hills, definitely a love hate relationship!:laugh:

It just so happens there's an article on hills from this month's runners world

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-263-264-14490-0,00.html

here's an article from a couple of years ago;

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-263-264-13520-0,00.html

Once every week or two is plenty.

Good luck on your next race!

PS Congrats on your first 5K!

shabaity

i live on the side of a fairly large hill so I've flat out decided I'm doing my running on that hill and just getting it over with

Pebble321

I'm running a half marathon in two weeks time (my first one, arrghhh!!) and it has a few nasty hills - a steep one in the first km, the long slow one, the short steep one (heartbreak hill they say) and the "god, surely this will be the last hill" set of three in the last few kms.

So, I've deliberately included hills in my training - luckily I live in a hilly suburb so I just schedule one run a week that goes up and down the nastiest hills I can find a couple of times.

My strategy is to keep an eye on my form (posture, breathing etc) and to run as far as I can. If I need to walk up the last part of a hill, that's OK, I'm a slow runner anyway, I just treat it as a walk break.

Hill training has definitely improved my physical ability to cope with hills - and has made an even bigger difference to my mental approach to hills - I find that I'm not scared by them any more, I just see them as another part of the run that I'm going to do my best on and if I walk part of them - that's OK, no need to panic.
And I've been really surprised to find that now I'm getting used to big hills, I find that running a gentle upwards slope pretty easy, I often speed up!

PS. Congrats on your first race. It's just one year since my first and I remember how awesome it felt to complete the distance!