Hill Training Boston Marathon

by Maurenia
(Ottawa, ON, Canada)

Hill training the last 4 weeks before Boston :

"I am now only 4 weeks away from Boston and I'm starting to freak out. My girlfriend who has run Boston 10 times stated that besides the long run, the most important part of training for Boston is by doing hill work. I have been following your training program (3:30 plan) precisely - but it had no hill training! Am I going to be OK without this? She also said that only 4 days per week of training is much too little! Has your plan "worked" for people running Boston (do you have any stats on the success rate of your program for Boston)? Please HELP!"

Answer: Hi Maurenia and thanks for the question.

No worries at all. First of all, the 100 day plan for 3:30 has 4 sessions a week, but with the quality of these and the overall structure, this is plenty. It is my personal opinion as a former world class runner and through the experience of the many following the 100 day plan. And yes, many of these have run the Boston (after NYC, this is probably the second most common marathon for runners of the plan to target), with success. There is no reason to worry, I do understand that someone who has run a marathon 10 times has opinions - but my opinion is simply different and I have fairly good reasons why I take that stand.

Now, on to hill workouts.

What I want you to do is the following. On the next session you run, do parts of it in a hill, about 20-30 minutes of effective running. You can allow yourself a little bit extra breaks in between intervals in order to run down. Say the next session is something like 7x6 minutes, then you run four of these 6 minutes as hill work.

Do the same 20 days before the race. And then 10 days before the race (NO CLOSER !)

That gives you 3 sessions like this, that will be plenty of hill work to get ready :)

No worries at all, and I wish you all the best,

kind regards,
Marius