Fartlek Friday Hammer the Hills

  It was a bit of a right of passage to do a hammer the hills fartlek when I ran for George Davis at UML.  He had a loop that was less than 5 miles long and had seven or eight hills.  There was a great variety from short to long and shallow to steep.  The toughest hill was the last one and in true George fashion there was a two way stop you had to run through, the unsafe way, half way up.  George used this as a staple in athletes returning from injury before letting us back in with the wolves and as a great workout for someone who wouldn't be able to workout with the rest of the team on a given day.  Simply it was a workout without any way to measure it objectively it was strictly a workout based on effort.  Beyond that it was a workout that was sure to get a great effort and really start toughing you up.

  So what is it?  Super simple.  You just hammer every time you go uphill.  I really like to be a stickler about this.  I mean a two stride bump in the road and I drop two hard strides.  You run at your regular pace between runs.  On a loop that is largely flat this is a nice moderate run with a few nice hard efforts to open up the system.  On a very hilly loop this can be one of your hardest sessions.  I would do this on a 1.5 mile loop in the Phillips Academy Sanctuary that is basically a loop around a valley so it has two killer long climbs each loop.  Six or seven loops in there and I would be DONE!

  When to do it?  First I'm a huge fan of fartlek and hills most anytime as a workout on a day when the main plan may have fallen through or as the second workout for the week.  Second this is a great bread and butter session if you are preparing for a cross country or hilly road racing.  You can adjust the distance of the fartlek depending on the the distance of the race you are preparing for.

  Goal Race   Fartlek distance

5k                    3 to 5 miles

8k/10k               5 to 10 miles

half marathon    8 to 15 miles

Marathon            10 to 25 miles

  What are you trying to accomplish with this workout?  First anytime you do hills you are building your muscular strength.  With this workout specifically you tend to get long breaks so you are working on flushing out latic acid completely which makes it a great transition workout between base work and heavy anaerobic work for 800 to 10k runners or early in cross country season.  This is also an awesome session for building mental fortitude.  It is real easy to get motivated for and not intimidating but you really have to dig down to get a good effort on tough hills later in the session.

  Variations

  You can run faster, as fast as fundamental tempo run pace, on the stretches between the hills to make this a specific prep for a race strategy where you plan to hammer the hills.  This makes it a great aerobic session and really forces your body to flush out a lot of acid at a quick pace on the recoveries.

  Another option is to do this on your long runs.  This can be a great first step towards some of the hard long workouts I and others advise for the marathon.  

  A variation on the long run is to find a place with real long climbs.  One summer I lived near Northfield Mountain in western Massachusetts and it has a ton of trails.  I would do my Sunday long runs up there.  I often would push the long uphills, 1 to 3 miles, and just recover and fly on the long downhills.  It was ok if I found myself completely hammering quads burning and gasping for air at 7 miles into a 22 mile long run because I was going to recover on the next downhill but it really can build the mental fortitude as well as the aerobic and muscular endurance.  This session was almost like doing a series of uphill tempos with 10 to 20 minute easy running breaks between them.  I'll tell you I never ran better on hills than I did the fall after I spent the summer doing those runs!

   So the next time you are about to skip a workout because life got in the way or whatever and you are about to just head out for your regular old training loop MAN UP and Hammer the Hills!!  You will sneak a workout in where you would other wise have just a regular training run, you will be tougher for having done it and chances are you'll have a lot of fun in the process.