Too Many Hills???

While having easy access to steep hills can be a great thing for an ultrarunner, I’m learning it can have its downsides as well.  Roads and trails that I am able to run regularly average about 250 ft of elevation gain every mile. It’s great that my new base building phase has me consistently running again and I have made some nice improvements to my aerobic base as well as improvements in the “mountain legs” department.  Doing a few thousand feet of elevation gain each week has made my ability to go up hills noticeably better.  I’ve also made some improvements on the downhills as well.  Downhill running was always a weak point for me (still is).  I tend to break too much and not lean forward enough, which is something I am getting better at but still need to improve.  My quad endurance has also improved greatly and I don’t find myself with destroyed quads anymore after a lot of downhill running.  This is all great and has allowed me to push longer and farther, but as my distances are increasing, I’m noticing the increased downhill efforts are starting to lead to some soreness in the knees. While “too many hills” is a good problem to have for an ultrarunner, it does mean that I may have to be more conservative about how I build up the distance and that I may need to incorporate some corrective exercises into my programming.

I was originally thinking of moving onto the Tactical Barbell Green Protocol book which builds you up to running ultra-distances, with concurrent strength training, as my next step, but I may opt to first cap the distance I am running and focus on improving my downhill form (and speed on uphills and flats) so I can keep running consistently and avoid injury when I eventually do make further increases in distance.  With 3 successful 50Ks in the bank, it’s no longer a matter of can I do the distance, but how can I do it better so I can eventually scale to 50 miles.  Slowing down a bit on running distance progressions to correct a problem, while still being a more consistent runner than I was with training for my previous races, will still be a win and Green Protocol will still be there waiting for me in a couple of months.