The Norfolk County Pacers have a Tuesday night hill workout. We generally got 6-10 runners during the winter and hopefully will get some more in the spring through fall day light hours. We start at 6:30 in the parking lot at the top of the hill and do a warm up run down one side, a loop around a couple of blocks through the neighborhood at the bottom to get to the other side and then up and over to our starting point.
The hill has a "long" gradual up section (approx. 3 tenths of a mile). The short side is a little steeper (approx. 2 tenths). Our workout consists of a hard run up the long side, recover the short. Hard up the short, recover the long. We repeat this 3 times.
The total workout is just over 5 miles. 3 miles of hills and the mile loop twice for the warm up and warm down.
I have seen the benefits personally of this training. I took two minutes off my 5K time from November to February.
Catching up to some back issues of Runner's World, I found in the February issue an article by Amby Burfoot with some scientific studies to highlight the benefits of this training.
You can read the full article here.
Some key takeaways for me:
A 1977 article in the European Journal of Applied Physiology concluded that runners who followed an intense six-week program of hard uphill running enjoyed "significant improvements in training distances, anaerobic capacity, and strength."
A chapter in the International Olympic Committee's 1992 book Endurance and Sport reported a study of runners who did 12 weeks of regular training, plus "hill training with 'bounce running.'" After the 12 weeks, the subjects' running economy (or how efficiently they ran) increased by an average of three percent.
Arthur Lydiard had a hill routine that was part of his athletes regular training that is not so different from our NC Pacer Tuesday night workout (we would need to add the short sprints at the bottom of the hills).
Of course, not everyone appreciates hills. Nor can, or should, everyone run hills.
But for those who do, it is worth it!
