CoachesEducation.com

Next to the football stadium there is a hill about 100 yards long. I think this hill is too short for hill repeats. Is there a way to use this hill for workouts? And at what point in the cross country season should hill training be utilized?

Hill circuits is one way you can utilized the 100 yard hill. Before attempting hill circuits, athletes should have a good base of mileage.

Hill circuits are a high intensity/low recovery type of training. It is an anaerobic threshhold workout where the emphasis is "training to race". You want to run hill circuits at a pace equal to or faster than race pace.

Hills improve endurance and enable runners to maintain the hard pace necessary for successful racing. Hill circuits are organized by running uphill/downhill at a race pace, with sets of 2-5 continuous repetitions.

Here are sample circuits on a 100 yard hill. Place a cone at the bottom of the hill, another cone 25 yards up, another cone 50 yards up, another cone 75 yards up and another cone at the top or 100 yards up the hill.

Run the circuit continuously from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill and run all the way down, run up to the 75 yard cone and back down, run up to the 50 yard cone and back down, run up to the 25 yard cone and back down. This is one circuit. Then do a recovery jog until the next circuit.

Another sample circuit is to do three of the above circuit non-stop.

With regard to periodization, in the first week you could start with 2 circuits and in the second week you could do 3 circuits, the third week 4 circuits, etc., up to 5 circuits. This is where you apply the overload principle.

Coach Payan
www.CoachesEducation.com

What about a hill that is approximately 3 miles long once a week?

Coach:

You are one of the few fortunate one's to have a hill three miles long. During the second phase of the preparation period (base training), I would concentrate on a short, fast run once a week. These runs are referred to as anaerobic threshold runs.

For the well developed and experienced runners, do an up and back run. For the runners not as developed, place a marker at the two mile mark and have them run up to this marker and back.

This workout will lead to repeats of 1200s and mile repeats on this same hill as the season progresses.

Coach Payan
www.CoachesEducation.com

I have a seven mile hilly course that we run every Saturday. The first four miles is all up hill, the last three miles are rolling. After about three or four weekends of this run, our runners can tell a big difference and they set new Pr's. What do you see as the pluses and minuses of this run?

After three or four weeks the body adapts so you need to make a change. Increase the mileage one mile every 3 or 4 weeks until you reach your maximum long run. The maximum long run is computed by multiplying the total weekly mileage by 20-25%. This is your goal.

My high school athletes went from two continuous runs to hill repeats two times a week with great improvement. This training has taken us to Nationals in cross country and track & field.

Coach Payan
www.CoachesEducation.com