Running Hills?

[stinkerbell6879]

So where I live there are no hills to get in some training for courses with hills, i.e. Pasadena, CA, Portland, OR etc...

So my question is....if you don't have hills by you, do you train on the treadmill? or drive to where their are hills? I would like to get better so I can work on improving my time on my HM's.

[clseale]

Do you have bridges? My city is completely flat, but it's on the coast and it's nickname is "The River City" so bridges abound. Bridges=My hills. Still...no amount of bridges will be able to prepare me for the San Francisco marathon that I'd like to run one day, but I do what I can.

[stinkerbell6879]

I wish! I am in Central CA, in a flat town! lol. There are some areas but that also means trail running on top of hill training, which I guess would not be to bad. Just not something I could do very often.

[clseale]

If hills aren't far away, I might try and work that into some long weekend runs. Otherwise, I'd just take it to the treadmill. That's probably what I'll do when I train for San Fran to simulate long, steady climbs.

[shauni27]

It is funny for me to think of living where there are no hills...in Vermont there is a joke that if we smoothed out the whole state to make it flat from all of the hills and mountains, the state would be as big as Texas!

[phillyrunner]

My usual running path is very flat also. When training for the San Francisco half marathon last year, I would just add a weekly treadmill hill run and do intervals of hills for 3-5 miles.

[stinkerbell6879]

Thanks guys! I have done 2-3 HM with some pretty good hills that kicked my ass even with walking them so anything to help me train better.

[spunkypenguin]

I'm jealous of your lack of hills! I can't find anywhere close to run that is even flat-ish.

[jdbyogi]

You could come stay with me! My run this morning had a 700 ft elevation gain during the first 6 miles. Boo. I would think if you can find even one long, big hill, and run it as repeats, that would help. The steep but short hills are nothing compared to the never ending long hills. Running up is hard, but the running down is also hard for me- it hurts my knees. Otherwise, setting the treadmill to an uncomfortable incline and staying there for a few miles would be helpful.

Do you guys feel like like running a stadium would help? I've done it a few times, at least you get the incline and decline.

[jdbyogi]

Oh, and I also see nothing wrong with driving a little bit to get to some hills. I drive to meet my running group, I drive to find some flat areas to run, and I do drive to much worse hills than I have really close to me. It's fun to explore!