Metronomic Hills

By Simon Loughran - UK Athletics Coach in Running Fitness (CiRF) and Athletics Coach

A challenging session where the landscape is in control
Ideal for including a mix of intensities
A great session for the roads or trails

Metronomic Hills is an excellent session for hitting lots of different intensities on a run.

Equipment

You'll need a GPS watch or some means of measuring your pace for this session.

The Session

Find yourself a nice hilly route. Ideally one that's not too familiar.

Now identify a pace of your choosing. It should be a pace that you know is not beyond your capability when running up a steep hill and no faster than what you could manage in a flat race lasting an hour.

Your goal is simply to run around the route and maintain the same pace regardless of the gradient.

Obviously you'll find yourself working fairly hard up going up the hills and fairly easily going down them.

Run for 20-45 minutes depending on ability and the intensity of the session.

Variations

Heart Rate Hills

Another great workout that's similar in approach, but completely different in execution is heart rate hills where you maintain a consistent heart rate instead of pace.

No real need for a separate warm up/cool down for this session. Just take the first and last five minutes or so easy.

This is great fun on a course that you don't know well because of the surprise element.

If the course is very challenging then permit minor deviations from the prescribed pace (e.g. a range of 15 seconds/mile either side).

Also See

Read our guide to hill running.

Work out the level equivalent of a hilly run with our grade-adjusted pace calculator.