Fitting Remarks: All About Hill Workouts!

Hill repeats are an excellent way for runners to build strength and improve their speed.

Hills make us better runners. Hills are our friends!

I know that I blamed my poor performance at the Flying Pig marathon on the hills (and the heat), but I also can't avoid every interesting marathon just because of a few hills. The hillier marathons are usually the most beautiful, so doing hill workouts to prepare is a must. Yet hill workouts aren’t just for hilly marathons. You can reap the rewards of hill training when you run on the flats as well. Hill training will make you a better runner overall!

With that said, our run club incorporates hill workouts into our marathon training plan, and it’s on the schedule for people training for hilly marathons like Flying Pig or pancake-flat races like Chicago.

Monday night was the Calhoun Beach Running Club's first hill workout of the fall marathon training season.  Even in a stereotypical flat city like Minneapolis, we are able to find a hill to do repeats on!

Our workout hill is a 1/2 mile hill on Kenwood Parkway. (I wrote about it in this POST from a few months ago as well. Our hill goes right by Mary Tyler Moore's TV House.) 

The hill that you choose to train on might be longer or steeper than ours, but the basic idea of doing a hill repeat should be the same.  Generally, the idea is that you will run up the hill fast/hard, and then you recover by jogging down super easy. This type of hill workouts is fantastic for improving VO2 max and increasing muscle strength. In fact, I have read that hill repeats are basically a form of strength training:

“The forceful contractions caused by the lifting of the hips, glutes and quads when you’re running up the hill utilizes the same principle mechanics as many plyometric exercises. Also, because these long hill repeats are often very intense, they are a great VO2 max workout. The muscle groups you use to overcome hills are virtually the same as those you use for sprinting, so hill work enhances your speed. This strengthening effect is supplemented by the fact that hill workouts help increase both the frequency and length of your stride -- you get even faster. As a final added bonus, hill training also strengthens the muscles around your knees, helping to reduce knee injuries." source

Here are some tips and training ideas for your hill training.

Always warm-up!

We do an easy jog for about two miles to the base of the hill. You should get 10-15 minutes of slow jogging in to warm up the body before you arrive at the bottom of your hill.

Focus on form.

Don't stare at your feet. Instead try to focus on the ground about ahead of you.

Push Yourself!

Run up the hill at your 5K "effort" pace. You'll want to try to push yourself hard up the hill, keeping a consistent effort up the hill but then take it really easy on the downhill. When you reach the top of your hill, you should be feeling the burn…Turn around and recover by easy jogging or down the hill.

When should I start hill training?

Ideally, you shouldn't start incorporating hill training until you have 4-6 weeks of solid base training under your belt. We are in week 5 of the Twin Cities/Chicago training, so it’s a good time in their schedule for a hill workout. Unfortunately, since our marathon (the OBX marathon) is not until November, Dustin and I are technically just starting our OBX training. However, we are both experienced runners. I think a few extra weeks of training can't hurt us.

How often should I do hill training?

Most sources I found said no more than once a week.

How many repeats should I do?

Your number of repeats depends on your experience and fitness level. Our training schedule always offers a range. Monday night's range was 3-6 repeats. We max out during training with 8 repeats. If you are new to running, I would recommend the lower end of the range, but if you are an experienced marathoner who has been hitting all of the miles so far in training, then go for the higher end of the range.

Most coaches and experienced runners would agree that training on hills is a great idea for any marathon runner.

What about you? Do you train specifically on hills? Or are all your routes already hilly?

Fitting Remarks: Marathon Training Workouts

I have my fair share of experience with marathon training, but I am by no means an expert. I don’t have any certifications or qualifications, other than my own experience to pull from. Despite my lack of real credentials, I figured it was okay for me to share what I know about marathon workouts based on experience. Maybe some of it will be new to you, and hopefully helpful in some way!

Common Marathon Training Workouts

Tempo Workouts: A tempo pace is one that is comfortably hard. You can still talk to your running partner in short sentences, but you won’t be carrying on an in-depth long run conversation. Your tempo pace should be somewhere near your 10k race pace, a pace you could maintain for an hour before being completely spent. We usually start out the training season with tempo intervals of 6 min to 8 minutes. Eventually, we'll do longer tempo runs of 15, 20, and 25 minutes. The tempo interval pace is perhaps 10 seconds faster than the true tempo pace.

Kelly and I did a tempo workout today: 2 mile warmup, then 3 miles at tempo pace, and about 3 miles of cool down for 8 miles total. Great workout! (Yes, I wore my lucky Lolë hat again)

Long Run Pace: You should be running your long runs EASY. In fact, you should be running about 1 minute to a 1 minute 30 seconds slower than your goal marathon pace, even if it feels slow.

Goal Marathon Pace: This is pretty straight-forward. If I want to run a 3:45 marathon, my marathon goal pace is 8:35. We often incorporate marathon goal pace into longer weekday runs to get a feel for the pace.

5-4-3-2-1 Workout:  This is a common workout that we do with my running club that I also often do on the treadmill.  After a short warmup, do 5 minutes at your 5 mile race pace, then half that time to recover (2:30). Then do 4 minutes at your 4 mile race pace, with 2 minutes recovery; 3 minutes at 3 mile race pace, 1:30 recovery, 2 minutes at 2 mile race pace, 1 minute recovery, and then 1 minute at your 1 mile race pace, which should be pretty darn fast! Then cooldown.

Broken Miles: We did this workout as one of our “track” workouts the other day. After a few miles to warmup, you do two sets of 800’s (1/2 mile) with just a short 30 second break between each, and then a longer 2 minute break between each set. Do 4-5 of these. And don't forget a few miles to cool down!

Track Intervals:  Easiest when you have a track but we do them on the trails on occasion, we'll do something like: 800m-1200m-1600m-1600m-1200m-800m.  On the track jog a 400m between the intervals or the usual 2min if on the trails.  Ideally on something like this the goal is do the second set faster than the first so no starting out too fast.

Hill Workouts: Any repeats that you do on a hill will work for this….Try to kill the hill on the up, and then recover on the down. Or, maybe change it up by trying to keep a consistent tempo pace on the "up" as you have on the "down." My run club usually runs a 1/2 mile hill on Kenwood Parkway. I bet no matter where you live, you can find some sort of hill...now, just run it and repeat!

These are just a few of the different workouts that we do at my running club. I’m sure there are all kinds of variations on these out there, as well as many others. 

You should also make sure you’re never doing two workouts in a row- always run easy or not at all after a workout day. At the peak of our training, we never do more than 2 speed workouts a week, with all the othe miles at an easy pace. 

Cross Training Another reader asked me what I do for cross training. I always share my fitness in my weekly recaps, so you can read all about it there. But generally, my goal is to have at least one complete rest day, a barre class or Pilates class, yoga, and ideally, one more strength day (either a second barre class or kettlebells or something like that). There's just not enough time in the day for me to always fit it all in, but that's my weekly goal. 

I hope this helps you out if you're looking for some new workouts!

What are your go-to running workouts? How often do you cross train? 

Fits Do Race Reviews: A $5 Race?

By Cool J in Minneapolis

Jazz hands to reflect our excitement for the Ron Daws 25k!

You read that correctly folks- five dollars! I shouldn't even be posting about this race because I think its a bit of a runners' secret. So here's the plan: just tell all your frenemies to go pay $70 for the Team Ortho Get Lucky half marathon (plus $10 to park at the race and $10 to park at packet pickup), and then you can write your check for $5 (yes, check- there ain't no fancy, highfalutin online registration for this race), and mail it in (yes, snail mail). And guess what? I'm 99.9% sure you'll have the "better" long run.

This super secret race, my dear friend, is the Ron Daws Memorial 25k (25k = 15.5 miles). Its held in Hopkins, Minnesota at 8 am sharp on Saturday, April 6. With its voluminous hills, the Ron Daws is often a very popular race for people training for the Boston Marathon. However, this year the two races were too close together. (Boston is the Monday after next weekend) Boston training run or not, the Ron Daws definitely attracts some hardcore runners.

I'm going to start off by saying that I give this race a 9 out of 10. There was plenty of free parking at the Cross of Glory Baptist Church as well as heated bathrooms, (though two hundred runners were asking a lot out of those old church bathrooms.)

Again, you read that correctly- only 200 runners! The race is capped at 200, though there was still room this morning for race day registration (double the price though...at a whopping $10.)

If you're looking for frills, cool gear, a medal, lots of crowd support, goodies at the finish, etc. then this is not the race for you. But if you're looking for a down home, old school run for RUNNERS, for a price that fits the bill, then this is the race for you.

No frills packet pickup in the church gym

The course was funny. You did two laps of one loop, to get to about six miles, and then you did two laps of another loop to get you to the 15.5 mile distance. It was actually not too bad, because you knew what to expect after experiencing the hills the first time around, (though it was a little disheartening to get lapped by the winners around mile eight!) Running the same loop multiple times meant that you passed the solo support stop four times- perfect!

Map of course

There were maps available in the gym, so you could become familiar with the course, but luckily for me (and my terrible sense of direction) the course was marked quite well, especially for such a tiny race. There were cones, arrows, and accurate mile markers the whole way.

Dustin studying the course, though he really didn't need to!

The course was funny, but also incredibly challenging. According to Dustin's Garmin, there were multiple hills with nearly a 5% gradient, over about 3/4 of a mile. Every time you encountered a new hill, you knew you'd have to run it at least one more time. 

I ended up running with two men who were probably close to seventy, but they had a lot of good stories about the history of the race. They were friends with Ron Daws himself!

Who is Ron Daws? 

According to this Wikipedia article, Ron Daws was a runner and 1968 Summer Olympics men's marathon athlete. Born in Minneapolis, he also competed at the 1967 Pan-American Games marathon, and finished first in the National AAU marathon also in 1967. He was married to Lorraine Moller in the 1980s, who he later divorced. Daws died of a heart attached in 1992. In honor of his death, in 1993, the MDRA Rons Daws 25k was renamed after him.

Picture of Ron Dawes and Steve Hoag running in Theodore Wirth Park

source

By the way, his first wife Lorraine was also an accomplished marathoner, participating in four Olympic Games. She won the bronze medal in the marathon at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona at the age of 37.

Personally, I had a pretty terrible race. My legs were quite heavy from the hill workout on Thursday, and I easily lost the motivation to push it. I let myself use this as a nice and easy training run, albeit with lots of hills.  I didn't have much of a choice, as those hills were not my friend today, and my darn IT band was definitely flaring up. And I lost my Garmin, so all I had was an old-school stopwatch! But you know what? An old school stopwatch was perfectly suited for the Ron Daws 25k. Ron Daws didn't run with a Garmin, now did he?

Despite my personal poor performance, I still would highly recommend this race. It was a challenging course, that's for sure, but it was a lot of fun. Next year, I plan to run this race instead of the Get Lucky half marathon. And maybe next year, I'll have a Garmin and a little more drive to face those hills!

With my speedy running gal pals- and partners in crime for the Newport Marathon!

***We brought warm clothes to change into and headed to Pizza Luce in Hopkins for brunch afterwards. Did you know they have a pretty decent brunch menu, i.e. not pizza? Check it out here.

Fit Fanatic: "The Hill" Workout

By Cool J in Minneapolis

Just stopping by for a quick hello, after a late night of hills with the Calhoun Beach Running Club.

I have a love/hate relationship with a hill workout. The hate? Why is it so damn hard? Why doesn't it get any easier? Why am I moving so slowly? Did someone make this hill longer?

But it's not just the actual hill workout that stresses me out. It's the whole day leading up to it! I think about the impending doom all day at work. I think about what I'm putting into my body more than ever. Those leftover jelly beans? Probably a bad idea.  I constantly check the weather, debating how to dress. Windy, with a high of 47 degrees? Shorts? Capris! Ah, the stress!

The love? When the hill workout is over! It's awesome to have completed close to ten miles on a weeknight. Your quads and butt are tired and sore, but you feel great. It's true that you end up getting home pretty late, and you end up whipping up some food, (whatever kind of food you can whip up as quickly as possible), and before you know it, it's time for bed, but hey, you just ran a bunch of hill repeats! You rock! Oh, and tomorrow is a rest day!

Our club usually does repeats of a certain hill that is about half a mile long, or one mile roundtrip (up and down). It's located on Kenwood Parkway in Minneapolis. You know who else lived on Kenwood Parkway?

Mary Tyler Moore did!  Well, sort of. The show wasn't actually filmed in Minneapolis, but this was the house she "lived" in on Kenwood Parkway. Gorgeous, right?

So at least the houses are pretty to look at during the hill workout! But truly, it's hard to notice them when you feel like you're going to puke.....

It's a two mile warmup to the hill from the club, and then a two mile cool down afterwards. Throughout the marathon season, we increase the number of repeats from four, up to perhaps eight! Tonight was my second hill workout of the season, so I managed to do six repeats.

Here's a map of THE hill

I don't have the stats on the elevation for the hill. Mason tells me it's over a 100 foot gain, which may not sound like much, but remember, that's over just a half mile. And in Minneapolis, that's a mountain! But it's challenging for everyone. I dare all you SoCal bloggers to come do repeats on this hill and tell me our city is flat!

**Actually, side note- one of the SoCal bloggers that I read- Run, Eat, Repeat- is coming here in June for the Women's Half Marathon in Bloomington (a suburb of Minneapolis). This half marathon is only two weeks after the Newport Marathon, but I decided to sign up for the heck of it. Who doesn't love an all-women race? All that she-power is inspiring.  Let me know if you're running it!

I don't necessarily have to prepare for a ton of hills at my next marathon, as the Newport Marathon (which is in eight weeks!!!) isn't supposed to be that hilly. However, hill training makes you a stronger runner, no matter what. I'd rather do some extra hills today and be prepared just in case!

Afterall, Newport won't be hill free.  Here is the course description from the marathon website,

"Starting in Yaquina Bay State Park at the historic "haunted" lighthouse, runners will head north along the ocean through some of Newport's picturesque neighborhoods. This loop through the city is primarily residential with a few short gentle hills and turns at street corners. Heading back through the starting area, runners will proceed DOWNHILL under the Yaquina Bay Bridge to the bayfront. Past shops, restaurants, galleries, and a large fishing village, the course continues along the bay. Just past mile four, there is a short hill that rises about 40 fee, then descends back to back to bay level where it continues for the remainder of the race. The course follows the Yaquina Bay and River estuary to mile 15 where it turns back toward town, retracing the same route. The same hill at mile four reappears at mile 26, and then it's downhill from there to the finish. Along the course runners will be treated to a splendid variety of views and scenery, wildlife and shipping, fisherman and crabbers. It is a very flat, very fast, and beautiful course that will produce numerous PR's. The course is USATF certified and ahas proven to be an excellent qualifier for the Boston Marathon."

The course sounds beautiful! I'm getting really excited- only eight weeks!

What kind of hill workouts do you do? Do you like hills? If you live in Minneapolis, let me know where you do your hills!

Fit Fanatic: Mantras for Motivation!

By Jessie

Last night at run club, we did a hill workout. It was dark and chilly...and definitely not easy!

The warm-up route was about 2.25 miles, and then each hill was about 0.8 miles round trip. Dustin and I both did 5 repeats, and then the 2.25 cool down home, for a total run of around 8.5 miles. There was a good turnout of runners for a “random” hill workout, so it was nice to have the support of the others on my way up the hill. But I was still technically “on my own” for the hill, and I needed to utilize some self-talk to keep myself going in the dark and cold.

I started chanting to myself on the uphills, “You are strong! You are strong!”

It seemed to help me push a little harder. I swung my arms a little faster, and I felt strong!

That got me thinking about the different mantras that I often use to keep myself going during a marathon.

This season, it was often a countdown- “You can do it, only 12 more miles. You are strong. You are strong.” "You can do it, only 11 more miles. You are strong. You are strong."

I’d say that over and over until finally that number became 10, then 9, and so forth.

Around 7 miles, I always say, “Only a Calhoun and a Harriet, Cool J, you got this. You got this."(Calhoun and Harriet are two lakes along my frequent running route that together are about 7 miles.)

Then, eventually, mile 23, it would change to,  “Only an easy Calhoun Cool J…only an easy Calhoun.”

I also often chant “Just keep running, just keep running” to the tune of “Just keep swimming” on Finding Nemo....it works, I swear!

LL reminded me of our mantra when we ran TCM together in 2005. It was the first few lyrics to Cake’s song, “Never Gonna Give You Up”

“You look so good to me right now. You look really good to me..."

We’d say each to each other, randomly, and it made us laugh, and kept us going throughout the 26.2.

The well known Clif bar pacer, Starshine Blackford (with whom I ran at the Big Sur marathon in 2009), gave us this memorable marathon mantra to keep in our heads:

“Run the first 10 with your head. 

Run the second 10 with your legs. 

Run the last 6.2 with your heart.”

 

I believe mantras and self-talk are extremely important, especially for female runners. I think that girls are often taught to be modest and not to brag. Maybe that is just a generalization, but from my experience, I just don’t think women are as encouraged to “puff out our chests”, and roar about how “kick-ass” we were at that track meet, the same way that boys are.

And unfortunately, these “lessons” from our childhood might carry forward into our adulthood, leading us to talk negatively to ourselves, rather than positively. 

Sometime I’ll catch myself saying, “Cool J. You are not cool. You are so slow. This sucks. Why are you doing this?” 

I have to step back and realize that I am making it “suck” by mentally pulling myself down, rather than building myself up!

We need to leave negative thoughts behind in running. We must tell ourselves just how AWESOME we really are.

 “You are strong. You are strong!”

Runner’s World recently published an article touting the power of mantras:

"To achieve your running goals, powerful legs and big lungs aren't enough—you also need a strong head. Doubts and distractions can derail your attempts, but a well-chosen mantra can keep you calm and on target. Repeating choice words whenever you need to focus helps direct your mind away from negative thoughts and toward a positive experience.

Indeed, the Sanskrit word "mantra" literally means "instrument for thinking." As such, these short words or phrases have long been used to focus the mind in meditation.

So what makes a good mantra? One that's short, positive, instructive, and full of action words. Runner’s World suggests preparing multiple mantras before a race tailored to various challenges. And don't limit yourself to "real" words. A made-up word works for Tara Anderson, a 34-year-old runner in Boulder who recites, "Lighter, softer, faster, relaxer." 

"I repeat it with each footstrike, and if I'm having a problem, I'll repeat the relevant part until I'm in the flow," she says. Her phrase helped her set a three-minute PR in a 10-K in 2009. Here's how you, too, can wring some running magic out of a few well-chosen words.

Choose one word from each section below to create a motivational, get-it-done power chant.


A
Run
Go
Stride
Sprint
Be


B
Strong
Fast
Quick
Light
Fierce


C
Think
Feel
Embrace
Be
Hold


D
Power
Speed
Brave
Bold
Courage

Now put those words together, and say them to yourself on that last hill repeat."

My new one? 

"Be Fierce, Think Power!"

What's yours?