I think I’m done with speedwork. I ended up doing three workouts last month, which is longer than I’ve managed to last in the past. This time I tweaked my hamstring on the 7th of what was supposed to be ten 800 meter reps. It wasn’t enough to keep me from running and was completely fine after a week, but it was enough for me to move on to another training stimulus – hill repeats!
I’ve periodically incorporated hill repeats into my training pretty much from from day 1. At first, I would add 3-5 additional reps of a given hill on my normal training routes. Just a little extra to get some more vert into my runs as what’s readily available is only about 100 feet gain/loss per mile. I did this off an on for a couple years. It was basically intro to hill work.
I didn’t get serious about hill repeats though until training for Eastern States in 2019. There’s a relatively short section of trail at a local nature preserve that would give me about 300 feet gain/loss per mile. So I started doing 15-20 miles on this short section of trail. I would mostly hike the uphill sections and then bomb the downhills. It was mind numbing, but the only way for me to add decent vert to my weekly mileage. A couple years later, I added a similar mid-week run on a road section a couple miles from my house. Power hike up, bomb the downhill. Rinse, repeat. That’s been the extent of my hill training up until now.
I’ve now decided to run the uphills instead of hiking and recover on the downhills. The section of road I’m using is relatively short, but gets me 300 feet of elevation gain/loss per mile. Currently, I’m able to run about 85-90% of the uphill, which is far beyond what I’ve done in the past. I’ve been able to do two of these workouts a week (Tuesday/Friday) for the past couple weeks. I started at 1,400 feet elevation and have progressed to 2,200 feet in my latest workout. While my legs have been a little tired after the workouts, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that they haven’t been completely thrashed. I’ve spent the past couple years walking up pretty much every hill I’ve come to in training as well as races. They shouldn’t be conditioned to actually running uphill, yet somehow they are. Or maybe I’m not pushing the tempo enough running up them.
I don’t know how long I’ll continue with the hill repeats, but I’ve already done a lot more of these workouts than I managed with my speed training. The hill workouts I’m doing are better suited to how I like to run than the speed ones were. The latter were very challenging mentally as I was continually focused on hitting certain splits. With hills, I can kind of zone out a little as I grind up the hill. Especially since my head’s down so I only know how much longer I have if I glance up. So these workouts seem sustainable for me. Or at least sustainable for the next three weeks until it’s time to taper for my next hundred.
