kleph
Gabba Gabba Hey
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2016
If all you run is hilly, then don't worry about keeping your pace consistent. It's just not gonna happen, and to be honest it's not really what you want over hills. The best approach (and this is by no means easy) is to try to keep your effort consistent. So you'll slow down up hill and speed up down hill, but you're trying to keep your breathing and heart rate about the same. And it's tough to get over how silly you feel taking what feels like little baby steps while going up hill. BuckeyeBama is right about trying to keep your cadence steady, and your stride should be kept on a sliding scale. Like I said, this is NOT EASY. But very beneficial.
a running coach once advised me to approach hills like a cyclist. if you watch the tour de france, you see all those guys going uphill but their legs move in a whir. they are using lower gears with less resistance to offset the impact of the incline. so when i attack hills i speed up my cadence but shorten my strides and make an effort to keep my feet as close to the ground as possible. yeah, it feels a little silly at first but i'll put up with that for the performance payoff.