Hills: Dreams or Nightmares?

I have often asked myself this question since I have been involved in track & field since the 5th grade. My elemenatry school coach use to have us run up this tiny little hill on the side of West Powellhurst, and even then I remember not liking them (the hills). During middle school and high school track & field hills became kind of a side issue. We never ran them very often, and the ones we did run were never very bad, meaning they weren't long and steep. I guess it was the college days at the University of Oregon that made me really contemplate the meaning of hills. During the early season training days, the hills were literally a life and death struggle. The exhausted members of the sprinting and jumping crew would constantly ponder deep thoughts about the meaning of existence as we sprinted up the long, winding, seemingly endless uphill trails. Yes that was where the question started for me. Hills: dream workout, or a nightmare you just hope you would survive.

Now as a coach I believe I have found the answer. Hills are a dream workout especially for early in the season. In Sandy we are blessed with an abundance of hills ranging in length from 100 meters to a mile, and ranging from slight incline, to "are you serious?" incline. I believe hills are essential to building speed endurance, and power in the sprinter, jumper, hurdler, and even distance runner. Since we have the luxury of so many different hills we can modify our workouts accordingly.

The first hill workout is always the most difficult for our sprinters. The theme is just survival. We focus on longer distances to help build speed endurance. The natural incline of the hill helps the athlete with the natural position desired for proper sprinting mechanics. We remind our athletes to keep their forward lean as they are running up the hill and remind them to attack each repetition of the hill with their toes up and knees up. A good indicator of how many repetitions to do depends upon the length and incline of the hill. If the hill is fairly steep and over 150 meters long the beginning athletes will not be good for more than 6 hills while the more advanced athletes may be good for 8. Remember that once the form starts breaking as they are running hills, the workout has lost maximum effectiveness and coaches need to reign in their athletes when this happens.

Last Friday I introduced some of our new athletes to an old friend named Marcy Hill (A hill next to our high school that leads directly to the Sandy River. It's very steep and is about 1 mile long). We were shooting for 6-8 hills (170 m long), but after 6 solid efforts, it was clear that our workout was finished. Next week when we revisit Marcy I will have a slightly different workout ready for the athletes. We'll break up the intervals into groups of 3 with varying lengths. The first interval will be long (170m), the second shorter (120m) but run at a more aggressive pace, and the last one will be a fast aggressive sprint that will be around 70m. We'll repeat that 2-3 times. By the time the athletes get to the last hill in each set they will be tired physically, but they will also have the mental edge that this last bit is short and I can really finish hard, which is exactly what you want them thinking when they are finishing a race.

So now that I as a coach have found the discovery to the enternal question which has been haunting my track world since the 5th grade, I wish to pass on this knowledge to others. Some of my athletes still have nightmares about Marcy, but those nightmares have turned into some beautiful dreams.