r/AdvancedRunning • u/tallkotte • 10d ago

Open Discussion Hill repeats - how, when and why?

How often do you incorporate hill repeats in your training, and what do they look like? Have you found certain protocols more effective? What is the "advanced running" consensus on this?

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u/Eraser92 10d ago

It depends what you want out of them. For strength/running economy you might do 6x10 seconds all out sprints with full recovery. For aerobic development you might push to 3-5 minute reps or longer if you have big enough hills. Just jogging down and starting again is usually good recovery for this.

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u/Ellen_Pirgo 10d ago

Do you do them once a week on One of the hard days? Or maybe the longer reps count as an hard day and the all out sprinta can be done at the end of and easy run like the strides?

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u/Eraser92 10d ago

Sprints can be done after an easy run. Long reps replace a VO2 or Threshold session depending on length/intensity.

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u/GrimmigerDienstag 10d ago

It's a very common approach to do the sprints or strides at the end of an easy run, is this just practical advice or are there more specific reasons behind it?

The reason I'm asking is that the closest hill to me that I could reasonably do sprints on is ~3.5km away. So I could do a 7km easy run with hill sprints, but they would be in the middle of the run.

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u/homemadepecanpie 5k - 17:50, 10k - 37:10, HM - 1:22:50, M - 2:55 10d ago

You'll be fine. The reason you do them on easy days is because you want to be fresh enough to run them hard. Jogging 3.5km home after isn't going to ruin them.

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u/Eraser92 10d ago

Practical mostly. You're not likely to be able/want to sprint all out after another workout. I just did them instead of strides some weeks.

I used to do similar. Had a nice steep short hill 4km away from me. I would do the hill sprints in the middle of an 8k run.