Hilly Training for Flat Race

Audio Transcript

Coach Claire: Today’s question is from Melinda, who lives in a hilly area and is training for a flat marathon.

Melinda: Hi there. My name is Melinda from Bermuda, currently training for the London Marathon. I was reading in an article recently that was saying that you should try and train on similar grounds as to what you are about to run, and in Bermuda, it’s virtually impossible to run anywhere flat.

Thinking about that coming up for Chicago, which I’m running as well this year in October, is that something I should think about when I’m running? Because I create my own routes and map my own routes, or is that not a big deal?

Coach Claire: Melinda, I can relate to this because I also live in a hilly area and trained here for the Chicago Marathon in 2015.

Both Chicago and London are considered flat and fast courses, which seems very straightforward but that actually poses a challenge for mountain-dwellers.

When you run on unchanging terrain for several hours, you recruit the same muscles in the same way, with no variation over and over again.

On a rolling course, your hamstrings and glutes and curves are working a lot more on the uphills while the quadstake over on the downhills.

That allows the imposing muscles to get a little bit of a break. You don’t have that benefit on a flat course. It’s pounding over and over again and you need to find a way to train the muscles to be able to handle the monotony of an unchanging course.

When I ran the Chicago Marathon in 2015, there are a few ever so slightly elevation rises towards the end of the course as you run over some overpasses, and even that tiny change in elevation felt like sweet relief for my tired legs.

How do you train on flats when you live in the mountains?

You’re absolutely right Melinda, you need to train as specifically as possible. That means you need to find some flat. What I would do, was to go down to the river in my area, that’s the flattest section possible, and I would run the same stretch over and over again, to try to simulate what a flat course would be.

What you’ll want to do is do the same thing. Find as much flat as you can and you’ll definitely want to run on flat for your long runs and for your tee workouts.

Two or three days a week you’ll want to stand on flat ground as much as possible. How do you do this? You said in Bermuda that it’s nearly impossible to find flats. If you can find any little stretch, you might have to repeat the section by going back and forth over and over again or you may have to resort to doing some runs on the treadmill.

I’m sorry that’s not what you want to hear. Nobody wants to run on the treadmill but if you want to get your legs as used to the similar pounding of the same course over and over again, the treadmill is actually a good estimation of what it’s going to be like on a flat course.

You don’t have to avoid hills every single day. Hill training is still great strength training which will pay off for you in the marathon no matter what the course.

Of course, getting out in the mountains and getting on some rolling hills, that’s good for mental health. Every time you have to do one of those flat runs, you can throw in a hilly run the next day to make yourself feel better for all that flat work that you were forced to do.

Again, for any race course, no matter what it is, being as specific as possible is what is going to allow you to succeed and do your best on race day. Unfortunately, it’s going to be monotonous, I know it is, but it will be worth it if you can squeeze as much flat time on your feet as possible.

Your issue of being in a hilly area and racing on flat is not nearly as challenging as the other way around, where a flat-lander doesn’t have access to hills and is attempting to run a mountainous course.

That is a much more challenging problem because the flat-lander doesn’t have any hills to train the specific muscles on.

At least you will be able to get some good solid training in but if you can, get on flat as much as possible; that will be ideal.

If you can’t get on flat or you simply don’t want to be on the treadmill, if it’s not worth it to you, you will still get a good marathon, and if you’re training on hills you will be strong.

You’ll be able to get through it but it would definitely be more of a challenge if you can’t practice on flat at all.

You raise what you practice so if you can practice the course, you’ll be a lot more successful than if you can’t. I hope that helps and with the right training, flat will truly be fast.

I love that question and thanks Melinda for sending it in. For those of you listening, that want to have one of your running questions answered by one of the RunnersConnect coaches, head on over to runnersconnect.net/daily and record your question and we’ll answer it in a future episode.

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