Workout: Building Hill Repeats

I was out in Clermont the other day, getting through my long run, when I saw the UCF women's track team crushing some hill repeats. They were the inspiration to this workout, so thank you ladies. Also thanks to Rose for giving me hill workouts last year, hard but fun!

Goal: To build strength, work on leg speed, and overall power/burst efforts.
Time Frame: I'd use this in a build period. Introduce some hills prior to this, I'll list out some build ups a little further on.

Workout: Find a hill that is steep, but not ridiculous, think 4-8% and something similar or sharper than you might have in a race. You'll have three varieties here (drop 3 cones if with a team), one segment of 15" sprints, one segment of 30" efforts, and the final segment of a single 45" effort.

Warm up:
5-10' easy jog
Dynamic warm up of 5' or so (skips, karaoke, arm swings, heel to toe walks with opposite leg doing high knees, things of this nature).
3x20" strides with 1:20 recovery.
(15-20' warm up)

Main Set: (6 total hill efforts)
3x15" Hill Sprints on 3:00

- Jog 3-5m before the start line of the sprint, no cold starts. This is an ALL OUT SPRINT for 15 seconds. After slowing the momentum and stopping, WALK (yes, walk) back down the hill. Once at the bottom you can easy jog for 30-60" or just walk around, but don't stand still. (15" sprint, 2:45 recovery). 

2x30" Hill Efforts w/2:00 rest

- Similar to the efforts before, get a jogging start. Tone down the effort a bit, but you're still faster than 5k pace and going really hard, just not an all out sprint. WALK back down the hill and easy jog or walk around once at the bottom, don't rush the walk down. 

1x45" Hill Effort w/2:00 rest

- Same deal as the 30" efforts, but closer to 5k effort, but still faster. 

(17-ish min main set)

Warm Down: 

10-15' of easy running, low end z2 or slower. 

Total time: 42-53 minutes. 

To build into this you can start with 4-6x15" efforts, just to get the body used to it. Then progressively transition to 30" efforts, starting with 5x15" efforts, 1x30" efforts. Continue down the line, 4x15" & 2x30", 3x15" & 3x30". Once at the 3x15 and 30" efforts then add in the above workout. You can continue building that up until you're doing roughly 3 of each. The amount of effort seems like a lot but it's on a big rest so the overall work compared to volume is still pretty low.