Run-Down Forums

[Guest]

This is my first Marathon and I need advice:

My concern is in the terrain that I am training on: The Marathon is flat and the training that I am doing is on quite a sloping hilly area which slows me down considerably. I went on holiday for three weeks and realised that I am running a 4.6 min km training on the flat, and a 5.5 min km training in the area that I live in. Of course I have no choice but to keep this up anyway as this is where I live, but I am worried that if i train for hill and the run is flat that it will adversley affect my performance.

Does anyone know if there is a view on training with hills for a flat race? I am varying my runs as much as possible and doing fartlek a few times a week and I have noticed that the longer I run the faster I seem to be. That is: if I go for a 12 k run, I do it in 4.8 min km's and if i do a 6 k run, I do it in 6 min km's.

Is this good to have this kind of variation or should I go as fast as possible each time?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!!!

[Dan]

Lydiard (famous Australian coach) is very big on lots of miles in the hills, and it produced many of the world's best. Training on hills makes you strong, and if done correctly, can boost your speed. The flip side is rarely true, however -- running on the flats is unlikely to make you a better hill runner. Basically, I don't think you have anything to worry about. The key is that you are able to run faster on the flats.

Variation is good!!! Never try to run your fastest every day. You might manage to for a week or so, then you'll notice that you're merely running a mediocre pace every day and getting virtually nothing out of it. Everyone needs recovery time.

Dan