Hill repeats: 8 x 1 minute uphill

Eight hard minutes of climbing that build leg strength, running power and a VO2max stimulus with less pounding than flat intervals.

How to run it

Warm up 15 minutes easy, ending at the bottom of your hill. Run 8 x 1 minute hard uphill with 2 minutes of easy jogging back down, then cool down for 10 minutes on the flat.

Pick a hill of 4 to 8 percent grade that takes at least a minute to climb. Too steep and your form collapses into a shuffle; too shallow and it is just a fast interval. The effort is RPE 8 to 9, about 5K race effort, not a sprint. Run tall, look up the hill rather than at your feet, drive the knees, shorten the stride and let the arms work. You should reach the top breathing very hard but still running with good posture.

Pace means nothing uphill, so run these by effort and let the watch time each rep. Heart rate is not much use either; it lags the 1-minute effort badly. Consistency is the target: the eighth rep should reach roughly the same spot on the hill as the first.

The 2-minute recovery covers the jog back down. Run downhill relaxed and short-strided, and if you reach the bottom early, jog on the flat until the watch beeps. Braking hard on the descent is where hill sessions do their damage, so keep it soft.

If you have no hill, a treadmill at 5 to 6 percent incline works. Set the incline before you start and adjust speed only.

How to scale it

Easier: 15 min easy, 6 x 1 min uphill hard with 2 min jog down, 10 min cool down.

Harder: 15 min easy, 10 x 1 min uphill hard with 2 min jog down, 10 min cool down, or longer climbs for strength endurance with 15 min easy, 6 x 2 min uphill hard with 3 min jog down, 10 min cool down.

For pure power, go short and steep: 15 min easy, 10 x 30 s uphill max with 2 min walk down, 10 min cool down.

Common mistakes

• Sprinting the first two reps. Save the fastest effort for the last one.
• Hammering the downhill. The descent is recovery; a fast downhill trashes the quads and does nothing for fitness.
• Choosing a hill that is too steep. If cadence drops and you are leaning at the waist, find a gentler slope.

Type it, run it

Paste 15 min easy, 8 x 1 min uphill hard with 2 min jog down, 10 min cool down into TextFit and it becomes a structured workout with each climb and each jog down as its own step. It lands on your Garmin, Wahoo or Apple Watch through intervals.icu, and the watch beeps at every change so you can put your head down and climb. Free to start, with 10 workouts a month and no account needed. Get TextFit on the App Store.