How To Adjust Your Paces, Heart Rate And Effort When Training On Hills

Audio Transcript

Hey. It’s Michael, Runners Connect Coach! Today’s question is from Wasim.

Wasim: Hi there, this is Juasim from California. I’m an advanced [inaudible 00:01:38] /intermediate runner.

My question is that as I’m looking at different training plans, I notice thata lot of different plans are built around time, pace and heart rate measurements to determine intensity and measure the workouts.

This all sounds great, and it makes sense to me, and the principles line up where it would be if I lived in an area that was relatively flat.

I’m blessed to be around a lot of hills and have nice little trails that run around my neighborhood.

This is great but I wonder how to train or give advice to train to somebody who lives in a hilly area, and has got low elevation inclination areas and [inaudible 00:02:19] inclinations as well, as well as parts that run steep and so on.

I just try to run a few different courses around and assume that hill training is doing a lot of different workout training for me.

What I’ve noticed though, is that except for the long runs, where I make a real special effort to go slow and make sure my heart rate doesn’t get very high and I don’t take on any real steep hills, it’s really hard to measure and maintain a consistent intensity.

Typically, I’ll work out too hard essentially. But to hills, you end up going a little faster than you want, it’s hard to maintain aconsistent pace and therefore everything becomes a workout.

I’m just looking for what advice you would give. I think there’s a few areas like how to do workouts in this area.

Do you just do hills? Do I leave and go someplace flat and do those workouts, which I’d rather not do?

How do you manage in the easy runs aside from just slowing down? Is it fine to just run those normal hilly routes, do those every day and assume you’ll get the best out of it, or should I be looking to vary my terrain so I’m not hitting hills too much, exhausting myself too often?

That’s my question. I’m trying to look at workout plans and you’ve got easy days, four miles, temple workout or a [inaudible 00:03:33] workout or a long run. But none of those things really jive with what you can do, when you’ve got a lot of hills around you.

I’m curious to how you would advise training, without making it too much of a hassle to go somewhere flat. I want to take advantage of the hills but also maximize training. Thank you.

Michael: That’s a great question Wasim and thanks so much for submitting that. It’s really one that I wish more runners would ask and it’s an issue with any online coaching platform.

You don’t really have the best sense of where people are training, what sort of terrain they are on and whether they’re on treadmills or running on tracks or running on roads, dirt, just hilly areas or flat areas.

There’s a huge difference between running up and down hills and say a treadmill, at zero percent incline or a very flat area.

As Wasim pointed out, it’s very easy for everything to become a hard workout when you’re training all on hills and that’s obviously something that we want to prevent.

Let’s get the hard answer out there first.

The most ideal scenario is to find some flat routes, at least for some of your runs.

For instance, maybe your easy runs, perhaps even a workout every now and then, see what you can do on flat ground.

That can be helpful when you’ve perhaps been doing all your workouts on hilly terrain, go see what you can do on flat ground with the same effort.

Plus, varying your training is really good for your body in terms of adaptation. It’s good to get one thing some days and another thing other days just to have some ebb and flow to your training.

And it prepares you for many different racecourses; it’s a hidden benefit there.

But now for some more practical advice.

Let’s assume that’s not an option, that you’re in a mountainous area with nothing but hills for miles in every direction.

Clearly, that presents a challenge so the effort is your number one measurement. This is the first thing that we need to get across is that your paces, those are all relative.

Your heart rate’s going to be jacked. Neither are good measurements here so effort truly is your number one most important measurement.

The paces can eventually become useful once you adjust, once you realize what sort of effort it takes to run on your routes, run up and down your hills.

But truly, effort is number one before you get to that adjustment period.

Let’s say you get a workout three times a mile, at let’s say, nine-minute pace. Now, that’s obviously designed for a flat ground but what do you do?

Well, you think about the effort. What sort of pace is that for you? Is that more along the lines of your 10K pace? Is it at your half-marathon pace? Is it even your marathon pace?

Regardless of the exact type of effort, what kind of effort does it take for you to go run that pace? Is that 70% of your maximum effort? 80%?

Whatever it is, you take that from flat ground and you translate it to the hills. Obviously, this is going to be a ballpark estimate and will take some time to fine-tune it.

In all likelihood, you’ll overdo it the first few times but eventually, you’ll be able to gauge your effort and hopefully convert that into paces.

The second thing is that extra steep hills are not even worth considering. Keep in mind that anyone can run a 10-minute pace up a really, steep hill and your heart rate is going to be really high.

Even if you’re in great shape and that’s normally a slow jog for you, that’s going to be a lot of effort to run up a hill at a 10-minute pace.

Your heart rate’s going to be jacked through the roof. You’re going to be giving a lot of effort just to make it up the hill.

If you can avoid extremely steep and/or long hills, that’s going to be ideal but if you do come upon those really steep, big hills, no matter what, just run up easy.

Obviously, it’s not really possible to run up a very steep hill easy but what I mean is let’s say you’re in a workout. You’ll want to press pause on that workout.

You’re doing your three times a mile that we referred to earlier.

Let’s say you’re four minutes into one of your mile intervals and you approach a massive hill, what do most people do? They try to keep going a nine-minute pace up the hill.

That’s definitely the wrong step here because the effort is just going to be so much harder than what we want.

What you’ll want to do instead is basically just press pause on the workout. Just pause your watch, pause your garmin, make it up the hill as slowly and easily as you can, and then once you get to the top, then you can take a minute for a breather and resume your workout.

If you’re on a rest period, you’ll want to take a little bit of extra rest.

Let’s say you have two minutes rest between those mile intervals and you come up to a big hill, one minute into your rest interval.

You’ll not want to go up the hill during your rest interval because you’re not going to get any rest.

What you’ll want to do, again, is to pause your watch, get to the top and then finish the rest interval once you are on flat ground or flatter ground.

Third thing is you’ll want to be careful on the downhills.

Downhills are very tough on your knees, quads and your whole body in general so make sure you don’t overdo it on the downhills.

It’s the same as a significant uphill.

If you’re on a very steep downhill, you want to press the pause button on the workout because it’s really not worth it, whether it’s a rest interval or especially if you’re on a harder interval.

Let’s say you’re back to those three times a mile and nine-minute pace, then you’re just going to be crashing down the hill.

Yes, it will be easy to run a nine-minute pace but it’s not really good for your body and it’s not really establishing what the workout is intended to.

Last thing, and this is perhaps the most important, is that the easy days must still be easy even if that means walking up some hills.

That’s hard for the most experienced runners to accept, walking during the middle of a run but if we’re talking about major hills, I actually advise it on easy runs.

If you think about it, your heart rate is still going to be high.

Even if you’re just walking up a really steep hill, your heart rate is still going to be high, perhaps even higher than it is when you’re going on an easy run.

You don’t really need to run; you just need to keep the effort easy. If that’s a slow jog, or a brisk walk, whatever it is that keeps the effort in line with your easy run.

Other than that, just make sure that 100%, the effort is as easy as possible when you’re out on an easy run.

There’s no pace requirements here.

Even if you’re one of our members and we have specific pace ranges prescribed for your easy days, that’s not really that relevant if you’re on a hilly route because you’re going to have to go slow.

Going paces that would make sense on flat ground just won’t make sense when you’re running up and down hills like that.

Again, it’s not even worth prescribing paces per se.

You just run easy and as slow as you can to make sure you get an easy run. Make sure you recover from your workouts.

To recap, the ideal thing is definitely to vary it up.

You want to get hilly runs on some days, flat runs on others and then some mixes in between.

Effort is your number one measurement. That’s better than heart rate, and better than pace.

Your effort is your number one measurement.

Make sure you’re careful with the extra steep uphills and downhills. Those can be very dangerous in trainings. You want to make sure that you’re careful there and your easy days must still be easy.

If you follow these steps, you will definitely train successfully in hilly areas.

Also, don’t forget how beneficial it is. It’s beneficial to have hills. I would rather see somebody with a very hilly area than somebody with an extremely flat area that has difficulty finding hills.

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Thank you so much for tuning in today. Hope you enjoyed it and we’ll see you next time.