Speed Development Thursday – Kenyan Hills

4 February 2020 - By David Jobling

Speed Development this week will be another Kenyan Hills session, the same as the one first introduced into our schedule last autumn proving popular with participating members – it comes lifted from Garmin, background and description of the session and why it’s called Kenyan Hills can be found as described by Garmin at the bottom of this post below which also includes some advice and a technical pointer.

Meet at Witham Leisure Centre 1930 to get away by 1945 for our warm up run to the green at the junction of Spa Road/Highfields Road/Asda where or near we’ll do a few dynamic stretches and warm up drills before kicking of the main part of the session which will last around 30 minutes.

The goal of the session is to run uphill efforts followed immediately by the same distance section downhill at the same pace & time (roughly Tuesday tempo pace but no faster) however the effort will be more relaxed on the return as you will be going downhill and this will give some recovery.

So, as last time we did the session and from our starting point on the footpath next to the green, the uphill effort will be up the footpath on Spa Road to where it flattens out at the overpass (a well known WRC effort turnaround spot) where you will turn back for the downhill recovery and then go again.

Last time we did this, the popular choice and final structure we arrived at seemed to be to do 2 hill reps (1 rep = up and down) followed by a 2 minute break, and then go again and continue until approximately 30 minutes had elapsed altho we may have to juggle the reps towards the end to make sure we don’t go over, or too far over!

It’s probably a structure best for the button on Garmins, FYI last time I did this one the distance up was 0.26M/0.27M – and of course the same coming down, so it could be programmable.

From an H&S perspective, please be mindful of other footpath users and do please keep to the left when running to avoid oncoming runners.

Monty and I look forward to meeting up with everyone on Thursday. DJ

“Hill running of all types develops the strength in your leg muscles and tendons without putting them under the type of stress they are exposed to during fast interval running.
Run up a 7—10% gradient for 30 seconds to two minutes at a solid steady pace. Turn immediately at the top and run down the hill with a long relaxed stride, then turn and repeat without resting.
We discovered this type of hill session when we were training in Kenya with some elite Kenyan athletes, so we call them Kenyan hills. They constitute key conditioning sessions. Like a threshold run, during a hill session you should be working at about 8—8.5 out of 10 and be able to utter just 4 or 5 words.”