Kenyan Hill Session For Trail And Hill Runners

This a fantastic session to improve your race performance on the hills.
Even if you only have a few small hills to play with you can still get a very good workout.
Benefits;
improves power,speed and endurance.
Gets you used to pushing over the top of the hill.
Improves confidence to race over tough terrain.
HOW TO DO THIS SESSION
Find a hill or hills in a park or off road which allows for a good surface to run fast on.
After a good warm up, run fast but constantly for a set period of time ie 2 mins, 3 mins or 5 mins up and down the hill without stopping.
Then take a recovery of 1 or 2 mins and repeat, an example session of 4 x 5 mins with 2 mins recovery might be used by an experienced off road racer.
The beauty is you can customize the session to fit your needs as well as stopping boredom.
An example of a beginners session might be 3 x 2 mins with 2 mins recovery.
Effort and Pace
Remember off road running is about running by feel not running at a set pace like on the road!
You could be running 4 min mile pace downhill but only 12 min miles uphill!
Tips
I've seen many runners make the basic mistake of running too hard at the bottom of a hill only to die a death before the top!
Learn to pace it right and accelerate over the top, then once into full speed on the down try and relax while maintaining speed.
Form
Uphill
Run tall, shoulders relaxed, lean into the hill from the ankles not at the waist.
Keep your hips pushed slightly forward.
Drive the elbows back for increased power.
Downhill
Again keep your body leaning forward, let gravity pull you down, hips forward and with a tall posture, float over the ground!