Learning to Run Hills

Before this training block, I had basically zero experience deliberately training hills.

Part of that was simple: I never really liked them.

Hill training wasn’t my strong suit, so naturally it wasn’t something I went looking for. The closest thing I had experienced in a race was the Zoom SF Half Marathon. Even that was completely different from what I am learning now on trails with sustained climbs and much bigger inclines.

When I started running hills more seriously, my first instinct was exactly what you would expect from someone coming from the road.

Attack the hill.

That strategy lasted about as long as you would imagine.

The biggest adjustment has been realizing how little pace matters once the terrain starts pointing upward.

On the road, pace gives me something concrete to chase. I can look at my watch, see the number, and understand pretty quickly whether I am where I want to be.

On a climb, that number can almost become meaningless.

Learning not to fight the mountain

This Diablo Half training block is where things are starting to click.

Instead of attacking every climb, I am trying to understand which hills are actually runnable and what effort I can sustain while running them.

There is a discipline to it that I did not understand before.

Sometimes going slower now is what allows you to keep moving faster later.

That has probably been one of the more humbling lessons.

I came into trail running with a strong aerobic base. The marathon gave me confidence that I could cover distance and sustain effort for a long time.

The mountains exposed the other half of the equation.

Strength changes everything

That realization has changed the way I think about training.

I used to separate strength and stamina much more clearly.

Now I am realizing that, especially on trails, they are tied together.

You cannot build the kind of stamina I want on steep terrain without having legs strong enough to repeatedly handle the climbing.

That has pushed me toward more strength work and a bigger focus on building the legs underneath the aerobic fitness.

Going uphill is still the hardest part for me.

But coming back down might actually be more destructive.

The climbs demand more effort in the moment. Descending seems to collect the bill afterward.

That is another part of trail running I am still learning.

These are questions I never really had to think about on the road.

Fitness is only part of it

Soccer has transferred into almost every part of my running in some way.

But running sustained hills might be the first area where that background has not given me much of an advantage.

It feels like its own skill.

The difference between someone who is simply fit and someone who is actually good at running mountains is the combination of strength, stamina, discipline and knowledge of the trail.

Having one of those is not enough.

I am still trying to combine all four.

And because this is my first real training block focused on trails and hills, consistency probably matters as much as anything else.

I do not expect one hill workout to suddenly make me good at climbing.

The improvement is going to come from doing this over and over again.

Maybe the biggest lesson hills have given me so far is one I normally would not associate with racing.

These hills might feel slow right now.

But slowly and steadily, I expect them to get faster.