Strength and speed equals power

During the classroom sessions  there was much discussion on the importance of leg strength and leg speed as well as endurance for those that tackle hill climbs and descents. You need strength to get up the hills but the runner with the most speed is likely to descend most quickly as their legs turnover faster. This was a camp for mountain running but, let's face it, we all have to tackle hills as part of our running. It's very rare that we find a race or training route without any.

We need to consider how much time to spend working on endurance, speed and strength. The answer to that is that it depends on how much we have in the first place. In other words, what are our strengths and weaknesses? We need to build on our strengths and address our weaknesses.

For anyone just starting out in running the first thing to build up is endurance. If we are aiming for a 5K race and we can't run further than half a mile it is obviously the first thing that has to go into the mix. After that, some of us may find that we are naturally faster on shorter, flatter runs but that some of our running friends come past on a hill climb or gradually ease away from us on longer runs. Others may find the opposite to be the case.

Once the weakness has been identified we need to plan how to get better in that area but still keep the other areas strong. The mountain runners from Britain tend to be better descenders than their European counterparts and that is because they do fell races in the UK that require them to hurl themselves from high peaks down to the villages below! The Europeans are not quite so reckless. They often run to the top of the mountain and find the finish line there. They then take the cable car back down - how civilised!

So the focus of the classroom sessions was on how to build leg strength to enable better and faster climbing. The runners looked at the training plans of some of the world's best in this area. In the plans there was a lot of hiking, weight lifting, cycling and cross-country skiing as well as long uphill running efforts. Not many of us live in areas where we can run uphill for more than a couple of minutes but we can all do the other bits. Cycling (especially uphill cycling), cross trainers in the gym and hill walking strengthen the same muscles that we use to run uphill and doing squats, lunges and deadlifts will strengthen all of our running muscles.

The runners had a go at some training sessions to develop their strength endurance. This involved them running up and down a hill continuously for between 8 and 16 minutes depending on their level, 4 - 6 times sprinting up a hill, down the other side and then running very easily along a flat section at the bottom, running between 2 and 5 miles continuously uphill (Snowdon) and then walking or running slowly down to the bottom.

The key now is to make a training plan and make sure there is some or all of the above included in it as well as some training that keeps the leg turnover fast. We will then have stronger runners that tackle hills more easily and won't that be nice? We could approach that hill that's looming in the distance with eagerness and confidence and learn to love the hills!