Workout Wednesday: Lauren Brandon’s hill running workout

Run those hills!

One of my favourite workouts of the week is running hills. There are definitely a lot of benefits to doing hill reps, so try to incorporate this type of workout into your weekly schedule throughout the entire year. Some of the benefits include: building strength, utilizing muscles differently, and it is a very time effective hard workout. My favourite part about hill reps is that you get in that hard effort without the stress of trying to achieve a specific pace. All you have to do is find a hill, decide on the length of your reps, and run hard for each interval.

Workout: 50-60 minute duration

• Warm-up: 10-15 minutes (include a couple of strides)
• Main set*: (30 minutes) 10 x 70-75 seconds running fast uphill.
• Take 10 seconds to rest/ walk at the top of the hill and then jog the rest of the way down. Do these on a 3 minute interval.
• Warm down: 10-15 minutes easy

* If you are just starting out doing hill reps at the beginning of your season, I would start with 8x 30 seconds one week and keep progressing slowly from there. You can add a couple of reps and then make them longer each week. If your focus is speed and power, then stay under 75 second hill reps so that you are always maintaining that hard all out effort.