Hill running marathon

by SteveO, Answer by Marius

My target race has hills - essentially it's down a steep hill, up a long hill, down the hill, and back up the steep hill. What is the best way to work hill training into the schedule? Just run some of the hard sessions on hills or...?

Answer: Steve, the way you can solve this is as follows.

1. One hard session every other week, move the workout to a hilly area and run your repeats on the hills.

2. In addition to that, have one of your easy runs in the other week (when you are not doing the hill repeats) on a hilly path. That is MORE than enough to prepare you for a hilly marathon.

The last 2-3 weeks before the marathon, tone this down slightly as hill work has a tendency to increase the muscular tone !

Kind regards,
Marius

Back from Hill Running Marathon to Marathon Training Schedule

I'm often asked what shoes I personally recommend to help stay injury free while running (on the 100 day plan) so I'll add a little bit about it at the end of these Q and A's.

Good shoes are crucial if you want to stay injury free during your marathon journey. In general, the best is to find a shoe that fits your feet according to your foot type.

However, these three shoes will do an excellent job with their mild correction - and will work for most runners :

The most sold running shoes ever - and by every model seems to get better and better. About the same weight as the Kayano but the fit is a little bit different.

The 2150 is a great alternative for the faster work you'll be doing in the 100 day plan. It is one of the few shoes that "feels" like a lightweight one but at the same time has more than enough stabilty to prevent injuries with the marathon type length of some of the interval sessions.

A tips for international (non-US) runners : check out roadrunnerssports.com : Example : Asics Kayano (RoadRunnerssports) they ship worldwide and it can really save you some money on your shoes.