Running up and down hills are great for your general fitness.

hill repeats are a very specific training to help with other areas, though. Nobby would tell you that they help your form. They also help your strength.

You don't have to run repeats, though. You can just run a normal course and charge the hills as you go, then recover on the other side. I do that sometimes in place of repeats.

Southern Man


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We're on a road to nowhere. Come on along.

Interesting question. Most people here probably haven't been in the sport long enough to know who Tom Osler is, but he won a few national championships on the roads in the Sixties, is one of the better ultramarathoners the US has produced and the author of a couple great running books.
Tom and I were talking about hills earlier this year. Tom has lived in the flatlands of New Jersey for most of his life. At times he would find a hill and do hill repeats. He mentioned that this sort of training seems to have "weakened him" and he wasn't fan of it.
But he spent a few years on the faculty at Rensaelar Poytech in upstate New York where the terrain is hilly. He found that he raced faster during that phase of his life than he'd been racing before and after the stretch at RPI and concluded that doing steady runs over hills improved his fitness by quite a bit whereas hill repeats had weakened him.
My own experiences have been much like Tom's. I grew up in western Pennsylvania where it's hard to run anywhere without going up and down hills. During college and early in my teaching career I'd go back and spend the summer with my parents and just doing steady runs over the hilly ground there and always found I was much fitter at Labor Day than I'd been at Memorial Day. But I didn't do repeats, I just ran over the hills.
Dick Quax followed a "Lydiard" approach which has a specific training phase devoted to hill repeats. But Quax didn't do that phase evidently believeing that doing his basework in New Zealand, which is very hilly, was sufficient.
So I suppose this is a long way of saying that if I lived in a place where most of my runs were done over hills I likely would not do specific hill repeats.

quote:<HR>Originally posted by rengle:
Interesting question. Most people here probably haven't been in the sport long enough to know who Tom Osler is, but he won a few national championships on the roads in the Sixties, is one of the better ultramarathoners the US has produced and the author of a couple great running books.
Tom and I were talking about hills earlier this year. Tom has lived in the flatlands of New Jersey for most of his life. At times he would find a hill and do hill repeats. He mentioned that this sort of training seems to have "weakened him" and he wasn't fan of it.
But he spent a few years on the faculty at Rensaelar Poytech in upstate New York where the terrain is hilly. He found that he raced faster during that phase of his life than he'd been racing before and after the stretch at RPI and concluded that doing steady runs over hills improved his fitness by quite a bit whereas hill repeats had weakened him.
My own experiences have been much like Tom's. I grew up in western Pennsylvania where it's hard to run anywhere without going up and down hills. During college and early in my teaching career I'd go back and spend the summer with my parents and just doing steady runs over the hilly ground there and always found I was much fitter at Labor Day than I'd been at Memorial Day. But I didn't do repeats, I just ran over the hills.
Dick Quax followed a "Lydiard" approach which has a specific training phase devoted to hill repeats. But Quax didn't do that phase evidently believeing that doing his basework in New Zealand, which is very hilly, was sufficient.
So I suppose this is a long way of saying that if I lived in a place where most of my runs were done over hills I likely would not do specific hill repeats.<HR>

As a young runner I never ran specific Hill work because I lived in them. but as I grew older I found I "drifted" into them and find they were (for me) great.They turned me into a far more 'efficient runner" as my technique improved.
Living in the Hills gives you a 'strength' that enables you to do most types of workouts.
Jack Foster did not run 'specific' hill work but ran some of his "hilly" courses quickly and I guess that could be construed as Hill work.
If you read any of Arthur Lydiard's info you will see that he lets no none off the hook with hills. Even the Flat landers can use a set of Bleachers in a stadium.




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Run easy, Run long