WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN

Yes hills are on the program again, what do you mean again, they are always on the program. Living on the slopes of Table Mountain I have grown up running hills and seem to have gotten quite good at them!!! Not only that I love running them...

So as a coach you will often find hills in the program. Now, depending on what we are training for will depend on what type of hill we do, so I hear you ask, what hills are you running at the moment? First up: I am training for a 4 hour trail race followed by a 3 day stage race, so I need to get a lot of running in to ensure I'm strong at the end of these races. Now with that in mind I will tell you that my training isn't what my programs are about. I need to look after the needs of the students, and I hear them say: fast, Coach, we want speed... a 10km in record pace, and then we want to run on the track in the summer.
I knocked up over 50km this weekend (2 runs) with almost 900m climb in Saturday's run and about 350m climb on Sunday... So with a little distance done and enough high meters under the belt during the week I can focus on the "kids".

After a rest / taper week last week some of the guys were ready to get going again, so they were excited about the session that lay ahead. We've done a lot of different hill sessions over the years, but this one is new to a number of the guys. After a 2km warm up we started: 60 sec hard / fast, easy down, (here's the real kicker) regroup at the bottom (to encourage competition) and bang I set then off again 50 sec hard... Then 40 and 30, all the way down to 10 sec. Before heading back up starting with 10 sec again. (you can really run those short ones fast.)

Now I've run lots of hills over the last couple of months, but like most of you I've been lazy, just running them. Not tonight, I hit the hills hard and tried to take the kids with me. I worked hard rep after rep and except for the short reps I was man alone out front. Hope in a couple of weeks the guys get hungry to ran fast!!! With one hill session behind me I hope I can stay focused on the sessions and then kick some butt at the end of the year!!!