Hill training for Flatlanders

How to train for the Newton Hills in the Boston Marathon

Holy Cow! It’s been a rough February.  Just when you’re supposed to be hitting the meat and potatoes of your marathon training for Boston we get snow and ice all-day and every-day. 

How do we get ready for those pesky hills at Boston?  Especially if you’re a Flatlander or have been chased inside by the weather.

First let me review how I usually would train for the hills at Boston and then we’ll move on into the extra-credit of how to do so when you don’t have access to any hills.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve heard of the Newton Hills on the Boston Marathon course.  They are a series of 5 hills starting at around 17 miles and ending with Heartbreak Hill at mile 20. 

It’s tricky.  You might assume that you can just do some hill work as part of your training and you’ll be good.  There are a couple wild cards about the Boston hills that make them more difficult than they should be. 

If you went out to Newton and ran that 4-mile stretch of the course you’d wonder what all the fuss is about.  They aren’t big hills.  They aren’t particularly long hills.  Any fit runner could conquer them easily in a normal race. 

But, this is far from a normal race.  This is the Boston Marathon and it wants its pound of flesh.  To be specific your flesh! 

There are two key contributing factors that make these hills ‘play’ bigger than their physical nature.

The first factor is that they are preceded by 17 miles of rolling downhill.  Some of it quite steep.  The second factor is where they fall in the race – right where most runners are at their lowest ebb, right where you tend to hit the wall.

These two factors have brought low many a veteran marathoner over the years.  Present company included.  It plays out like this: You’re running along at pace, having fun, high fiving the kids, kissing the coeds and then you hit Newton Lower Falls and Bam! A big hill.  “Phew”, you think, “My legs are a little tired…” Then Bam, Bam, Bam! Three more rolling hills.  Next thing you know you’re at the base of Heartbreak and walking because your legs don’t work anymore. 

Training for the Boston Hills tip #1:  Train well.  This isn’t a race for the poorly trained.  If you try to half-ass your training the course will eat you alive with that one-two punch of downhills followed by uphills.  If you train with the appropriate level of quality and volume you’ll stand a much better chance of weathering both the downs and the ups and maybe even have enough left over to race the flat fast last 10K into the finish.

Training for the Boston Hills tip #2:  If you haven’t trained with high quality and high volume HOLD BACK! Don’t attack those first 17 miles.  Hold back and save your strength for when you need it.  The early part of the course is downhill so you feel great, but your legs are still working hard, absorbing the gravity of the hill and it’s shredding your quads whether you realize it or not.  If you can negative split Boston you will achieve Jedi Master Proficiency level as a marathoner.

Training for the Boston Hills tip #3: work some hill training into your schedule.  In the final month of your training replace one of your speed work days with long hill charges (repeats).  Find a nice steep-ish ½ mile uphill.  Something that rises 200-300 feet in ½ mile. 

Warm up.  Stretch. 

Start into the hill at your normal training pace.  1/3 of the way in drop to race pace.  2/3 of the way in drop to tempo pace and leave everything you have on the hill.  Jog back down to recover.  Rest until your heart rate normalizes.  Start with 3 of these and work up to 5-10.  These suck but they build strength. 

Training for the Boston Hills tip #4:  Train your base mileage on a hilly route.  I see silly, misguided (or possibly lazy) marathoners doing their long runs down on the rail trail where there are no hills!  If you have a hilly race do your base miles, (your long runs, base runs and recovery runs) on routes that reflect the topography of your target race.  My base home route is a 5 mile loop with 300-400 feet of gain/loss.  Burn in those hill mechanics in your training.

Training for the Boston Hills tip #5: Don’t forget the down hills.  Another great advantage of training on hilly loop courses is that you get used to the downhill form as well.  If you want some extra insurance for the early down hills at Boston do some downhill repeats on that same ½ mile hill you were doing your uphill repeats on. 

One way I work this is by doing ‘up and overs’.  Instead of turning around and jogging back down, find a hill that is a ‘hump’ and keep going over the top down the back side.  This way you incorporate an uphill repeat and a downhill repeat into one repeat.  That’s a good simulation for Boston.  

What if I live in somewhere with no hills? Like Kansas or on an aircraft carrier or in the dimensionless open void of my own existence?  You can still train hills.

Training for the Boston Hills tip #6: make Mountains out of treadmills.  One time I was training for Boston but that wasn’t my ‘A’ race.  I had another race that I was terrified of that was a couple months after Boston that I was training for.  That race was the Mount Washington Road Race.  7.6 miles uphill at a gentle 18% grade. 

To train for the mountain I set the treadmill at the highest incline that it would go and just tried to keep up for an hour.  I did this once a week.  It wasn’t all running, but it was all uphill. 

When I got to Boston that year I was starting to struggle but when I got to the hills I felt great.  It was like having another gear.  My legs were so well trained to run uphill that the hills in Newton became a rest break for me allowing me to recover and race well to the finish.  I accidentally turned a weakness into a strength by bashing out those uphill treadmill sessions once a week in preparation for Washington. 

But what about down hills?  How do you train for downhills on a treadmill?

Training for the Boston Hills tip #7:  Simulating downhills.  Depending on the model some treadmills actually have downhill incline settings.  But, most ‘run of the mill’ (heh heh) treadmills don’t.   If it’s your treadmill you might be able to engineer some blocks to stick under the back of it to create a decline.  The health clubs generally frown on this DIY downhill approach though.  

When all else fails – and I have Coach Jeff from PRSFit to thank for this nugget – look up “isolated single leg squats” on YouTube and work in a session of those once a week along with your core work.

These are the things I’ve had success with over the years at Boston.  When I have failed it’s because I tried to short cut my training and/or went out too fast. 

Train well my friends and pat me on the head when you pass me on Heartbreak Hill.