Scottish Athletics Vertical Ascent Challenge -some tactical and technical pointers!

For this event, Russell has now entered everyone in the Harriers who has a valid Scottish Athletics membership. If you're SA membership is not up to date and you would like to represent the club, renew your SA membership and then you can enter the even via the SA web site Events section. 

The competition window opens on Friday 19th and closes on Monday 22nd June inclusive. The aim of the event is to gain as many metres of elevation in 30 minutes as you can with the proviso that you must also lose approximately as much elevation as you gain and it should not be a point to point route. There is a further proviso that the hill you use must not have an elevation gain of greater than 100m, but that won't be a problem within EK unless you are starting in Rutherglen or Cambuslang (which is a height differnce of 150m+) and running to EK (a bit of guidance, don't do that!). This means that it is a half hour session of hill reps up and down, something we do often at the Harriers. The total elevation gain in your session is as indicated on Garmin Connect.

Many have been asking what sort of hill to use. The idea is to gain as many metres as possible in a half hour. That means that short, fast hill reps and recoveries are better than long, slow hills. For example, doing Lickprivick from the bottom to the water tower would be a bad choice. The total running distance to the top is about 800m. It takes me 3 to 4 minutes to get up there and it is an elevation gain of about 40m (according to the OS map). Turning around and running fast back down would take 2:30 to 3 minutes, so 5:30 to 7 minutes to go up and down and therefore 4 or 5  reps in total if I could keep that going for a half hour giving about 160 to 200m of ascent. However, if instead I only run up Lickprivick for 1 minute at a faster pace, which wouldn't even take me to the bus stop, I reckon I could gain about 15m of height, and get back down in about 1 minute comfortably too. The OS map suggests that I need to run about 200m to gain 15m on Lickprivick. I am sure I could do that in 1 minute. This would mean at least 15 reps in a 30 minute period which would give about 225m of elevation gain, considerably better than doing the full hill.

There is no need to go up the hill for the same time or to the same point every rep. If you need a recovery period, go up for only 30 seconds rather than a minute and back down again. Or if you only have a couple of minutes left, try to do a lot of short, fast up and downs to finish the half hour off. These timings are just an example. 1 minute may be  too long; maybe 30 to 45 seconds suits you better. 

Steep hills are better but not so steep you can't run fastish. The hill at Langlands we use for reps is a good one. Avondale isn't so good as it is quite a gentle slope and you have to run a long distance and hence time to gain much elevation. There are no shortage of steep hills in EK/Cambuslang!

This week is the week to experiment. Find your hill or hills, record some data on Garmin Connect and work out what your best strategy is going to be to gain the maximum amount of elevation in a half hour. 

Remember that running fast uphill is particularly stressful. We always say don't run if you are not feeling well. This is even more true for this session.

A FINAL VERY IMPORTANT POINT. PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT THE AUTO PAUSE FUNCTION IS SWITCHED OFF ON YOUR GARMIN AS THIS WILL PAUSE THE WATCH IF YOU TAKE A REST BETWEEN REPS AND INVALIDATE YOUR TIME. Do this as follows on your watch:

Menu > Activity Settings > Scroll down to Auto Pause > Change it to "OFF" if it is not already off.

Here is a video showing it on my watch.

Alan