jogging techniques

Question
QUESTION: Dear Rick

I am a male aged 43. I usually jog around 2-3 times a week for about 35-45mins each. My questions are;

how to tackle a slope/hill? Do I increase speed, decrease speed or maintain it as in running flat.

I would like to incorporate speed training in my runs. How to do this. Should I dedicate one day just for speed running or incorporate a part of it in my usual jogging. I jog at a leisure pace usually. Again should I do speed training on flat ground or slope or etc.

Thank you

Sincerely

K K Chan

ANSWER: Since you only jog 2-3x/week, I would reccommend adding another day or two, if you want to see improvements in speed.  It just can't happen with once a week workouts, then 1 to 2 more runs per week.  

I would tackle a hill with the intention of maintaining your strength throughout it.  'Shift down a gear', if you will, and don't try to sprint up it, you will get 'tanked out'.  

If you wanted to incorporate some speed work efforts into your jogs, I would alternate easy & hard paces to add this in. An example is jogging easy for 4 minutes, then 1 minute of hard effort, returning to 4 minutes of easy, and 1 minute hard again.  Cycle through that for 2 times out, then turn around and do it for 2 more times back.  It would be a 20 minute workout for you that way, with intense efforts added in there.

You could train the easy/hard interval way for all 3 times per week you run, but like I suggested, it would be better to run more frequently.  For most speed workouts I do with my track & CC athletes, we run 400-1000m at hard pace efforts, with an equal amount of time for rest before the next one is completed.  We will mostly run our 'race amount' in total distance during these runs. Like if we were prepping for a 4000m distance for my girls team, we'd run 10, 400m intervals.

Rick Karboviak

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Dear Rick

Thank you for your answer. If I may ask again, can I do speed training over a slope/hill, is it Ok?

Thanks again

Sincerely

K K Chan

Answer
You can incorporate it over a hill, just be aware that it won't be as fast as a flatter portion of a run.  It's also going to be a lot harder, too. For now, I'd just worry about the speedwork on flat terrains, as those efforts will enable you to handle greater loads on your body, which will help you on small slopes & hills when they come.  

Rick