Warmup
- 1.5 miles easy
- Dynamic drills: leg swings, A-skips, high knees, walking lunges
- 6 x 100m strides — last two are uphill on the workout hill
- Find a hill near the stadium with a 6-8% grade and roughly 80m of usable run-up. The footbridge approach works.
Main Set
Two blocks. Hills first to lay down power, flats second to convert it into turnover.
Block 1 — 8 x 80m hill sprints
Near-maximum effort up the hill, walk-down recovery (about 90 seconds). Drive the knees, pump the arms, lean in slightly from the ankles — not the waist. These are short enough that your form should stay clean. Don’t slip into a survival shuffle in the back half.
After block 1, jog easy back to the track. 3 minutes between blocks.
Block 2 — 6 x 200m on the track at mile race effort
Smooth, fast, controlled. 200 walk recovery between reps. The hills warmed up your stride; now use it. Stay tall, eyes up, turnover quick.
These should feel different than the hills — less brute force, more rhythm. Mile race effort is fast but not all-out; you should be able to repeat the same time on rep 6 that you ran on rep 1.
Cooldown
- 1 mile easy
- Stretch: calves, hamstrings, hip flexors, glutes
Coach’s Notes
Hills are speed work in disguise. The grade forces you into good mechanics — knee drive, foot strike under the hips, full extension at the back — without the impact of flat-out sprinting on the track. They build power that shows up everywhere from the last 200m of a 5K to the final mile of a marathon.
The pairing matters. Hills alone build force; flat 200s alone build turnover; together they build the ability to apply force quickly. That’s speed.
Treat the hill recovery as real recovery — full walk-down, breathe, reset. The work is in the 80m, not in the rest. On the flats, the walk-back recovery should leave you ready to repeat your time, not chasing a PR every rep.
If your form falls apart on hill rep 6, stop the block at 6. Eight bad hill reps are worse than six clean ones.
Scaling
Newer runners: 6 hill sprints, 4 x 200m on the flats. Same efforts. Walk fully between everything.
Advanced runners: 10 hill sprints, 8 x 200m. Or tighten the flat recovery to 100m walk if the times stay consistent.