HIll training

by Per D
(Kristiansand, Norway)

Hill training and marathon prediction time

"Hi Marius, thanks for giving us a fun and effective program.

I have two questions for you.

First: Last year I ran my marathon race about eight and a half minute faster than my half marathon predicted. Can I learn something from this that should be incorporated in my all year training e.g. focusing on the 5/10 k training in your program?

Second: Which part/sessions of the program do you recommend doing as hill work? I have noticed you in general don´t advise this kind of training, but I really enjoy it and feels it boost my performance.

with regards,
Per Dybendal"

Answer: Hi Per and thanks for your questions.

To go straight to them :

1) You are definitely a runner that will LIKELY benefit from somewhat higher mileage if you run that much faster in the actual marathon vs. the half marathon. I've seen this many times, if you are that much faster in the full vs. the half, you have an obvious strength that in many cases will be pushed even further with higher mileage. This is easy mileage only, not any extra hard workouts. This is just from my personal experience and observations.

2) In terms of hills : you want the hill workouts to either be the shorter type work OR medium-long type work. So either 30-45 seconds of length or 3-4 minutes of interval length. So if you want hills in your plan, you want to find sessions close to that time length for the intervals and go for these :)

In terms of when in the schedule : be very careful with the marathon specific weeks, you should not do too much hill work during these, due to the high overall stress.

I wish you all the best,

Kind regards,
Marius