Technique on hills can be an area that plenty of runners struggle on. Understanding how to run hills then, is an easy way to make up plenty of time on people around you during a race, or even just make your long runs more enjoyable.
The key to hills is to make your running motion as economical as possible. Gravity is your friend. When going uphill, you want to shorten your stride and increase your cadence. This way you can run up the hill at the same pace as if you ran up it normally, but not wasting all of that excess energy fighting gravity. Put simply, each time you push off the ground you are using energy. The less force you push with, the less energy you waste. You should keep the rest of your running form the same, back straight, don't lean at the hips, use your arms, look ahead, etc. The final key point to remember is that you shouldn't be expending excess energy on the hill than when running on the flat. You'll naturally slow down, but the key is conserving enough energy to crest the hill well and suffer less than everyone around you on the hill. Downhill running uses the same key principal as uphill running. Gravity is your friend. The surest way to fall is to try and fight it and lean backwards. Running downhill you should lean forwards with gravity, extend your stride and go with the flow. This may seem scary at first but it's exactly the same principal as dropping into a ramp on a skateboard. Most falls happen due to a lack of commitment. With practice you should find it is actually easier to run down hills like this, than running slower and trying to slow down. You'll finish hills ahead of your opponents and in better shape for the rest of the race.
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As anyone who has raced will tell you. A good warm-up can be key to a good run. Warm-ups allow you to gently raise your blood and oxygen flow; as well as increasing priming your nerve and muscle connections, improving your efficiency of movement. Failure to sufficiently warm-up before a workout places you at risk of injury, and you will also find that your body will take a while to warm-up anyway. However, instead of allowing this to happen in a controlled, non-essential environment, this will be happening mid-workout. In a race this could mean that you spend a large proportion of your race underperforming, and unable to switch paces.
A good warm-up should incorporate a mixture of easy running, dynamic drills, and slow sprints (strides). It should be viewed in two parts: 1) The easy running- where you gently raise you oxygen and blood flow. 2) Dynamic drills and strides- where you simulate the stresses your body will undergo within your workout. It is important to keep in mind at all times what you are trying to achieve with the different parts of your warm-up. An easy run should be long enough that it does raise your heart rate. A three minute jog is unlikely to be long enough to allow you to adequately raise your heart rate, neither is simply walking. A typical cross country warm-up may be 10 minutes of jogging at a pace similar to that you would maintain on an easy run, however some runners may run for up to 20 minutes. Gradually increasing your pace throughout your run is another option to consider, as this allows you to have more control on the raising of your heart rate. Dynamic drills and strides are designed to isolate different movements within your work-out and ensure your body is prepared for all of the different stresses it is about to endure. The drills should be done accurately and snappily. Slowly going through the motions does not prepare your body for running quickly, and similarly if they are not done accurately they are unlikely to correctly mimic your running motion. Once you have completed your dynamic drills, you are finally ready for the strides. These are essentially 60m sprints but at about 70-80% effort. Think about the maximum pace you are likely to reach in your race and make sure you run them slightly faster than that. This ensures that it won't be a sudden surprise to your body when you reach this pace during a race, and lowers the potential of pulling a muscle mid-race. Put in practice it may look something like this:
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