The downhill sections of marathons or ultra marathons are where you can either gain or lose a lot of time depending on your training. Whilst many runners incorporate uphill repeats as part of their training very few target downhill running. Running downhill is a skill that needs to be trained to improve. It also places a greater load on the legs which unless you have trained for will destroy your quads and leave you with legs barely capable of a shuffle.
Downhill training is not only useful for a hilly course. If your race is flat then adding downhill running in training will strengthen your legs so they won’t suffer as much damage in the later stages of a race.This will allow you to maintain a good pace instead of resorting to a survival shuffle or worse still walking.
I know through my own training that adding downhill training into my routine made a massive difference to my ability to run downhill and also to be able to continue running in the latter stages of a 100 mile ultra.
I’d like to share a few strategies and tips that I have used to good effect.
Build slowly
Downhill running places a far greater load on the joints so must be built up gradually. Start with incorporating hills in your normal runs until your legs can handle the increased load without any extra post run soreness
Hill repeats
As I have discussed in an earlier blog, uphill repeats are a great way to increase fitness. But what goes up must come down and the downhill section can also be used for a training effect. Instead of walking or jogging back down take a short recovery at the top of the hill then run back down. Focus on running easily and taking short strides. Try and land softly and lightly with each stride rather than over striding and thumping your heel into the ground. At this stage you are not running fast downhill just running comfortably.
Downhill repeats
Once your legs have adapted to running comfortably down hill you can start to increase the speed. Find a short hill that takes approx 1-2 minutes to run down and run slowly uphill then run fast downhill. The pace should be faster than your normal run but not anywhere near flat out. Depending on what you are training for will depend on how many of these you should do. Progress by doing more repeats or a longer hill not by going faster.
Downhill efforts
By now your legs and joints should be well adapted to running downhill so this time treat the downhill section as the effort and uphill as the recovery. Find a hill that takes 2-4 minutes to run down. Run the downhill hard and slowly jog back uphill. Repeat 3-5 times. Running fast downhill involves a high degree of muscular co-ordination that takes time to develop. Having the confidence to just let go and fly downhill comes with practice so have patience . Crashing face first into the ground at speed is not fun!
Up and downhill
Now you can combine both. Find a hill that takes 2-5 minutes to run up. Run hard uphill then turn around and run hard downhill . Jog slowly at the bottom for approx 2-5 minutes and then go again. Do as many repeats as you can fit into 30-45 minutes. You might start with 20 minutes and build up to 45. This will teach your legs to run fast downhill even when your legs are tired.
Long downhills
If you have access to long steep downhills, lucky you. You can do some tempo running downhill. Start with 10 minutes of running hard downhill and build up to 20-30 minutes. Run these at the same kind of effort you would run a half marathon.
Stairs
Stairs can be a useful substitute if you don’t have access to long downhills . The longer the staircase the better. A great workout is to go up walking 2 at a time and then run down one at a time . Perform intervals of 10 minutes initially and build up to 20 minutes repeating 2-3 times with 5 minutes recovery between each interval. Not only is this a challenging workout for the legs it also develops fast leg speed which is often necessary descending rocky steep trails.
Terrain
Choose terrain as specific to the race you are training for as possible. Running down a steep road requires a vastly different muscular recruitment pattern compared with running down a technical off road trail.
Putting it all together
Here is an example training week taken from my diary when training for the UTMB ( a 100 mile race involving 9000m of ascent descent)
Monday
Stairs- 8 flights of stairs x 15 in 20 minutes. 5 minutes rest and repeat twice more. I built this up to be able to do it with a backpack weighing 8 kg on.
Tuesday
Speed session at the track 5 x 1 mile repeats , 60 seconds recovery.
Wednesday
2 hour off road easy hilly run
Thursday
Weights – Dynamic Lunges and Step Ups
Friday
Up and downhill repeats.
Hill took approx 4 min to run up and 2.30 to run down. All out effort repeated 5x with 4 minute easy jog recovery at the bottom
Saturday
Walk/ jog uphill , run downhill
I did this for 5 hours using various off road hills that took 1-2 minutes to run up (I would have preferred much longer but that was the longest technical off road track convenient to me) . The downhill section wasn’t flat out or even that hard , it was run at a fast comfortable pace. I’d cover over 100 hill repeats in this way.
Sunday off
This is obviously at the extreme end of hill training and it took me quite a while to build up to this but it was very effective for the UTMB. After the half way mark of the race no-one passed me up or downhill and I was able to run all the way to the finish , running every downhill confidently without my quads blowing up.
Word of warning.
Downhill running hurts, lots! Build up gradually and give your muscles time to adjust. When you legs can recover the next day with no more soreness than you would get from a hard run then you can increase the distance or speed.
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