Are hills their secret to running faster?

I filmed athletes in Kapchorwa doing a hill workout. Athletes here run lots of hills on a daily basis so I find it surprising that they do these hill sessions as well. Hills are great for building strength and think they are one of the reasons behind the success of Ugandan athletes. This session lasts 45 minutes and involve continuous hill repeats with recovery on the downhill.
Timestamps
00:17 Introduction
02:01 Workout begins
03:05 Joel's data
Assisted with filming by Jacob Mutela/Charis Media
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[@Sagargurjar10k]

Thank you sir I am from India

[@aidanoc19]

I used to run a lot of hills as a young athlete, both in daily running and hill sessions. I lived in Dublin and Cork, Ireland, both hilly cities. I always enjoyed running hills, no lap times to worry about, you just run to feel. I remember a great weekly winter session I did with my uni team up a dead end road at the side of a steep river valley. We had rough 100m markers up to 300m and the coach, a former Irish 800m champion, would always mix up the distances. I vividly remember the anticipation each time about what challenging mix of short, medium and long we had on the menu. Now I live in a much flatter city, Cardiff, Wales but I still try to find as many hills as I can but I'd be doing well to hit 300m a week now. Keep up the great content, you deserve a much wider audience!

[@alvinkarangizi]

Thanks Aidan! Sounds a very interesting and tough program you had at uni 👍🏿

[@hughlea8232]

Great content, i like the way you explain the paces, rhe volume and the gradient. I live in an area of the UK where hills are unavoidable. Most weeks i climb over 700m even though I rarely run more than 50km. Hills are mentally tough though. If you offered me a choice between a flat workout, say 6 x 800, or hills, id take the flat every time. Which probably tells you the hills would improve me more 😂 Great content, keep it up 👍🏼

[@alvinkarangizi]

Thanks. Your training sounds great. Yes hills are challenging but definitely build you.

[@lunyo7]

Hi Alvin, thanks for sharing such great content, this is quickly becoming my favorite channel! 🏃 In my opinion, weekly elevation gain is even more important than high altitude, because I've felt a tremendous difference in the past few months after moving most of my runs to hilly areas. My previous PB regarding weekly elevation gain was more than 2500m, and I'll double that easily this week. However, definitely none of it was run at 3:15/km, I'm not at that level yet. 😁 I'm probably visiting Iten in a month from now, but watching your videos I think Kapchorwa would be an equally good choice, you have amazing running conditions. Keep up the good work! 🙏

[@alvinkarangizi]

Thanks - much appreciated! Wow that's lots of hills and great to hear your progress. Iten is great, enjoy. Hopefully you'll come to Kapchorwa as well in future.

[@realrichloen]

Started doing hills but wanna do a lot more! Nice video, drone shots are very nice also 👏

[@alvinkarangizi]

Thanks! All the best with increasing your hill work - slowly build and I’m sure you’ll see your running improve.

[@calvincaron1683]

Great video, love this content

[@alvinkarangizi]

Thanks!

[@onion3974]

thanks to your hill advocating videos, i now love hills so much and accumulated 1800m elevation gain this week😂

[@alvinkarangizi]

Haha, nice work! But suggest you take it gentle with the increase and wait for your body to adapt so as to not risk an injury. Had trouble with my IT band when I increased my hill climbing too quickly

[@s.w.67]

Hi Alvin, Thank you for the very interesting content. I think your videos are way too underrated. How much elevation gain and kilometres do the professional athletes in these groups average? I’m especially interested in the elevation gain, since we know almost all the pros run at least a hundred miles. But I never heard something about the elevation they run,even though that’s the thing that makes it so much harder

[@alvinkarangizi]

Thanks, much appreciated. Great question! Most of the athletes I speak to run between 100 to 150km per week, the marathoners typically more. Most don't tend to upload their runs to a mobile device so makes it difficult to find out their total weekly elevation gain. I run about half of their weekly mileage (roughly 60km a week, hoping to increase it with time) and average out an elevation gain of 800m, sometimes 1000m on some weeks. So I'd imagine they are getting about 1500m per week. Gone for the lower end of the estimate as they mostly (if they can afford the 30min journey) do their long runs on the flatter plateau at the base of the mountain. My quads definitely get bigger over a few weeks I'm here so the hills are definitely doing something! and that's without any gym work. It's actually a great idea for a future episode, thanks. I've just got back to Kapchorwa, so more videos to come. Enjoy :)

[@s.w.67]

Thank you for your answer. I like your channel for its emphasis on sleep, food and dedication to training on the individual level but also being immersed in good culture and nature on a broader level. I think these factors are way too underrated or maybe simply forgotten in the west and all the Gadget centered channels on the internet. in my opinion it is this hard to achieve simplicity that produces the best runners in the world if one looks not only at the results but also at the means by which they are achieved. that’s why I’m looking forward to new content and what we can learn from it 😉 Thanks a lot , Samuel

[@alvinkarangizi]

Thanks Samuel. Yes that’s what I enjoy so much here, their running culture. They work together to improve and keep things simple 👍🏿

[@mbabazichristopher6422]

I really like hill wrks because they make me stronger and I get stamina very fast.

[@alvinkarangizi]

Great to hear and all the best with your training!

[@ericgbarber]

Thanks for the videos. When you say “moderate” gradient, are we talking 4-6% or something steeper?

[@alvinkarangizi]

Thanks! Calculated it and the gradient is 11%

[@Clift0n]

So I’m a little confused lol, so they just go up and down a hill for 45 minutes? And does it matter how steep the hill is?

[@rylanrussell9595]

I've experimented with that when doing specific pace work in the last phase of a marathon build and it actually worked shockingly well. On about 2 of my runs per week I would do 10 mile PMPs where I would run at PMP the whole run, going to a nearby hill about 800 in length and just repeating it at PMP. The uphill of course would push me close to threshold and the downhill was a modest recovery.

[@alvinkarangizi]

@Clif0n yes up and down hills for between 40 to 45 mins for long distance athletes, 30 minutes for middle distance. Calculated the gradient, it was 11%, so moderate. Hope that helps

[@alvinkarangizi]

@ryanrussell9595 sounds a good training program! What’s the p in pmp? Assume the MP is marathon pace.

[@rylanrussell9595]

@@alvinkarangizi projected marathon pace

[@Clift0n]

@@alvinkarangizihow do you calculate the gradient of a hill?

[@shquibbles8775]

Alvin got the GOAT channel man

[@alvinkarangizi]

Thanks!