Getting the degree of hills right in Comrades Marathon training
Getting the degree of hills right in Comrades Marathon training
The question to be answered on Ask Coach Parry today has to do with Comrades Marathon hill training and it comes from Louis Bordodey.
Louis wanted to know with regards to inclination and the degree of inclination as far as hill training goes. He wanted to know what is the appropriate inclination degree for hill training on your bronze programme for 2015?
Does it vary from training programme to training programme or should it be pretty much the same across the board and what should it be?
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Brad Brown: The question to be answered on Ask Coach Parry today has to do with Comrades Marathon hill training and it comes from Louis Bordodey.
Louis wanted to know with regards to inclination and the degree of inclination as far as hill training goes. He wanted to know what is the appropriate inclination degree for hill training on your bronze programme for 2015?
Does it vary from training programme to training programme or should it be pretty much the same across the board and what should it be?
Lindsey: It shouldn't vary from programme to programme. The average percentage incline on the hills at the Comrades Marathon is between 3 and 4 %.
I would put the treadmill on 4 to 5 %, start off on 4% initially, and then after a couple of weeks put it on 5%. But it doesn't need to be any steeper than that.
What would that look like on the road?
It is always difficult to say what that would look like on the road. I always tell people when they ask me that that they should go into the gym and put it on 5% - because then they will know what it should look like on the road.
I can't really say without giving people examples of hills and that is quite difficult because basically people listening are from everywhere. If I tell them it needs to look like Grovener, they won’t know what I'm talking about.
But anyway, Grovener would be too steep, but you get my drift.