If every climb leaves you struggling, look at how you train for hills and how you approach them. Charging into the bottom and hanging on until the top is rarely a useful pacing strategy for a long trail race.
Better climbing starts with controlled effort, regular practice and training that progresses over time. This blog will give you some tips on how to develop your hill climing ability.
Start with the effort, not the pace
Your pace will change with the gradient, surface and length of the climb. Trying to hold your flat-road pace uphill can turn an easy run into a hard session very quickly.
Shorten your stride as needed and find a rhythm you can maintain. On longer outings, ask yourself whether you could repeat that effort on the next climb.
If the answer is no, ease back.
Give your hill sessions a purpose
Short repetitions and sustained climbs ask different things of you.
Shorter efforts give you an opportunity to practise controlled, purposeful uphill running. Longer repetitions help you become familiar with maintaining an effort as the climb continues.
Choose the session to match your experience and goal. You do not need to squeeze every type of hill workout into the same week.
Practise hiking before you need it
For steep mountain races, purposeful hiking deserves a place in training.
Practise changing between running and walking without treating the walk as a failure. The aim is to keep moving at an effort you can sustain across the whole route.
Make your local hills work
You do not need a mountain outside your front door to start. A repeatable local climb lets you practise pacing and compare how sessions feel.
Build the workload gradually. Avoid increasing the number of repetitions, their duration and your effort all at once. Count hill sessions as demanding training when planning the rest of your week.
Put some structure behind your climbing
Our 12-week Mountain Goat hill training plan provides progressive uphill sessions through TrainingPeaks. At £14.99, it gives trail and ultra runners a focused way to work on climbing endurance and confidence.
Choose your hill, understand the session and give yourself time to progress.
