Running every hill
For the last few months, I've been running up every hill I encounter, every time I go running. I also choose routes so that there's at least one hill. It now feels like I've been doing this for a long time, but I think I only started doing it a few months ago, in September. Making this adjustment has been the best single change I've done for my running in several months. (The best change made in 2024 award goes to "getting a running coach," who is just fabulous.)
I think it's relevant to be upfront that I run slowly and that my thing is trail running. For example, today was my weekly long run, and I drove up to the local trails where I ran for 3:50, covered 26 km, and completed ~500m of climbing that was spread out over many small climbs. That's about 9-minute kilometres, not including hourly food breaks and that one time I peed in the bushes. Most of my weekly runs are about 1 hour, and maybe include 100-150m elevation. My body doesn't look "like a runner's."
With this context, running up every single hill feels both more and less significant, at least to me. It feels more significant because running uphill is physically and psychologically taxing! Doing so was a conscious choice, and a big step. It feels less significant because I don't hold myself to standards of any particular speed of running up the hill. The important thing is that the motion of running is maintained. I run up hills so slowly sometimes that it feels like I am stationary. I also don't have a rule about stopping mid-hill. I have a loose intention to try to get to the top of the hill without stopping, but stopping is fine; I just have to stand still while I stop. Once I'm moving again, it's back to running. Even if you're going very very very slowly, you'll know if you're using the running motion versus a hiking motion: it feels different, and harder.
Running every hill is not faster or more efficient on the hill itself. Developing a good hiking stride for trail running is generally seen as an important part of training, and of a comprehensive race plan for ultras (trail runs 50km or longer). In my day-to-day experience, I find that most people don't know what trail running is, and they see it as a hard and impressive thing to do. I try to make sure that one of the first things I say to these folks is that trail running is a lot of walking. Commonly, this seems like new information to the person I am speaking with. Imagine, all these people, going around with these delulu ideas that trail running, and therefore a trail runner, is someone who is RUNNING up and over mountains. I have good news: This is false. Trail running is a lot of walking. I feel passionate about pointing this out, because I believe that this misunderstanding causes people to be even more intimidated about trail running than they already are. Trail running has its challenges, and its gatekeeping, but running up everything is not counted among these. You can and should walk, and everyone from the noobs to the pros walks...a lot.
I run uphill because I'm me, and this change is what I needed to build confidence and eliminate decision fatigue.
I have been trail running since late 2019, five years wow! Walking was always an option on climbs. How often I used this option came and went, but I noticed that since returning earnestly to running in 2023 after a long hiatus, I was walking uphill quite a bit. In 2024 I ran ("ran") my first ultra. I walked a lot, especially at the end, even downhill. It was tiring! Going into the race, my coach and I had had a race plan, and it involved me having process goals. For example, for me to try and push it a little harder than usual on hills, and to use the downhills as free speed. (A pace goal or time goal would be more binary like "finish in X hours.") I gradually abandoned my process goals through the race. I want to be clear that there's nothing wrong with doing so, and races are just problem-solving and eating competitions once you're in several hours--in my case, over 10 hours. But what I noticed that bothered me was that walking ended up being associated with internal narratives of "I can't run up that hill," and then "I can't run here, and here, and here either." Every single hundred-metre stretch of trail presented me with a decision, and then each decision I made would contribute to my assessment of what I could do.
So, I decided all by myself that I'd try a new thing of running up every hill on every run. I still believe that hiking up hill can be faster and more efficient, but there's nuance there for me. For one thing, that comparison depends on how quickly you're walking. When you switch from running to walking, are you striding up at the same exertion level, or are you tending towards making it into a little break? The next issue is whether you (this is the general you we're talking about here, not you personally) toggle smoothly between running and hiking on climbs depending on the nuance of the terrain, or whether a choice to walk becomes walking until it's hard to justify walking? I find that precommiting myself to running up every hill means that I do run up grades that would be much more efficient to walk, but then end up running up grades that are very runnable for me, that I may not have run up had I been walking because I'd have tacitly decided to walk to the top. And then, at the top--and there are many tops, probably 50 tops just today--there's no decision to be made about whether to start running immediately again or maybe to just walk a little on the flat, to rest for a few seconds. You're already running, inertia carries you through. It's also incredibly helpful for me to reduce decision fatigue during a run. I no longer have to make any of these itsy bitsy decisions every single minute about whether to walk or keep running. The choice has been made, I have a rule and a structure, and I stave off decision fatigue. And, of course, last but not least, you can imagine how much the last few months have built my belief that I can, actually, run up that hill.