From Runners World for Orangetheory Fitness:
1. Running by effort rather than pace.
I coach my runners to train and race in Reasons Why Jogging Is Awesome. The Yellow Zone is the one where you can easily hold a conversation while running. The Orange Zone is a step up—you can hear your breathing and can only speak one or two words at a time. The Red Zone is hard—you’re breathing too hard to talk.
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There are many benefits to running by effort, but during a hilly race, the value is in having a strategy that allows you to efficiently manage your energy no matter the grade of the hill, the temperature, the wind, and any other variable.
Sometimes seeing is believing, which is why I’m sharing the following charts from a runner named Iain, who I’ve been coaching to race the great Comrades Marathon, the world’s oldest and largest ultra. The course runs 56 miles and is very hilly, with most inclines between five- and six-percent grade. The point-to-point course switches direction each year, and this is an “up” year—where the net uphill is much greater than the down.
It’s a brutal challenge that requires diligent hill and strength training, plus a solid strategy to deal with the heat, terrain, and distance.
This is Iain’s chart with heart rate (red line), pace (green line), distance, and elevation in the Catalina Marathon, which he ran as a tune-up. It shows his talent for running hills by effort. When you compare his heart rate (that is, his effort) to the elevation of the course (very hilly), you notice it doesn’t follow the ups and downs of the hills. That is because he walked many of the steep uphill sections to keep his effort at a relatively steady, easy level for the entire marathon. This takes patience and faith in the strategy, but it pays off.
He placed in his age group even though he wasn’t “racing,” made friends with the 90-degree heat, and recovered easily because he didn’t push too hard. He let pace be the outcome rather than the guide, and it worked.
2. How to Build Your Stamina.
In training, you can either practice how you’ll race on hills—that is, running up them in the easy Yellow Zone and using gravity to help you run quickly down them—or you can build fitness, strength, and stamina by running hard going up and going easy on the downhill to recover.
You can learn more on how to do this in this video.
3. Running similar hills in training (lots of them).
In order to smoke the hills in your race, you need train on hills that are similar. In Iain’s case, that meant training on hills with a five- to six-percent grade. In the early stages of his training, he ran two hill workouts per week: one shorter, harder Red-Zone interval workout and an endurance long run done in the Yellow Zone.
He started with 30-second intervals at three- to four-percent grade and built up to two 10-minute intervals at six to seven percent.
For his longer hill runs, he started with single long runs on a course that included hills from three- to five-percent grade and built up to running back-to-back and single long runs in the Yellow Zone with hills that were similar to the race. For his final long run he ran the hilly Big Sur Marathon with a 90-minute prologue. This allowed him to test out his fueling, continue to hone his pacing strategy, and train on endless, very steep hills that mimicked what he’ll run on the Comrades course.
When you review Iain’s final long run stats at Big Sur, you can see his effort level (heart rate – red line) stays very steady for the entire 34+ miles even though he’s running steep hills and for nearly ten more miles than his first training race at Catalina. The other interesting stat is his pace (the green line) in how it varies greatly as he runs the hilly course. This is the result of the longer hill sessions at similar inclines, his fitness, and his strategy in ebbing and flowing with the grade of the hills (easy on the way up, faster on the way down). If he were racing this event, the only change would be a gradual upshift in his effort as the race progressed and as he pushed harder into the Orange and Red Zones.
All it takes to run hills strong and happy is the wisdom to run by your body, the patience to run with the flow of the hill, and the tenacity to stick with the plan. Once you do, hilly courses become a joyful challenge.
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If you want to run and race hills well, it all comes down to doing three things Coach Jenny a running question on the Ask Coach Jenny Facebook Page or email your question here. Follow her on Twitter @coachjenny.
