Day 17 - Hill Training

Daily Total: 6 miles; Weekly Total: 30 miles; Per Mile Pace: 9:19; Days Until Marathon: 66

Another way to increase per mile pace is to incorporate a hill session or two into weekly training. I happen to live in a very hilly area, thus hill training is really unavoidable for me. Yet I've come to appreciate how hills are a built-in form of resistance that naturally amplifies the power in your stride over time.

I do not recommend running hills everyday as this can lead to injury or overtraining. If you are running four or more days a week like I am, two days of hill training is probably ideal. Apart from hill training, one day each week should be dedicated to sprints, another day to a medium paced run, and another day to a recovery, slower run. The recovery run should be somewhere flat. On my recovery days I opt for a run along the coastline.