Downhill running

This past weekend, I was at a high school cross country meet. I spent a good amount of time watching the runners go both down a good hill and then back up it after looping around a bit.

It’s amazing to see the various teams go down the hill. You can really see which teams give downhill running a good focus and which ones don’t really worry about it.

So, if you’re going to give some focus to downhill running, what should you work on?

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Uphill running

Examples of good hill form (the other guy) and bad form (me)

After last week’s post about racing on hills, I realized I should share some thoughts on running hills in general. So let’s go over good form for running hills, whether training or racing. I’ll start this week with running uphill, then cover running downhill next week.

So, what do you need to know about running uphill? Primarily, just two things: keep your stride rate up and your hips forward.

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Don’t charge the hill

Don’t get carried away on the uphill

In a recent cross country race, my daughter said a coach who has been working with a couple of her friends told her to charge the hill. I’m going to assume he said that because it was with about 400 meters to go and, regardless of the hill, it was just time to go.

If not, I found a point in which I disagree with this coach who my daughter says sounds just like me because we’re always saying the same thing.

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