Hills have a habit of getting inside a runner’s head long before they get under their feet. You spot one on the course map, you clock it on a route preview, and suddenly the whole run feels harder before you’ve even laced up. Birmingham is a city that demands runners make peace with elevation – it’s more undulating than its reputation suggests, and many of its most scenic and enjoyable routes come with gradients attached. The good news is that hills are entirely manageable once you have the right approach, and learning to run them well is one of the most effective performance upgrades available to any runner. Whether you’re training locally or browsing Birmingham running events to find your next race, the techniques in this article will make a real difference to how you handle whatever the route throws at you.
This isn’t about becoming a specialist hill runner overnight. It’s about removing the anxiety, understanding the mechanics, and building the specific strength and technique that makes hills feel like a manageable part of a run rather than a section to be endured and recovered from. Most of what follows is straightforward – but straightforward doesn’t mean easy, and the runners who apply these principles consistently are the ones who stop losing time on hills and start gaining confidence.
The other thing worth saying upfront is that hills are genuinely good for you as a runner. They build strength, improve cardiovascular fitness, develop better running form, and make flat running feel considerably easier. The runners who avoid hills are, in a real sense, avoiding one of the most effective training tools available to them.
Understand What Actually Makes Hills Hard
Before getting into technique, it’s worth understanding why hills feel as hard as they do. Running uphill requires your muscles – particularly your glutes, hamstrings, and calves – to work significantly harder than on flat ground. Your cardiovascular system has to keep up with that increased demand, which is why heart rate spikes so quickly on an ascent. The steeper the gradient and the longer the hill, the more pronounced both of those effects become.
The mistake most runners make on hills is trying to maintain the same pace they were running on flat ground. That’s the wrong metric. On a hill, effort level – how hard your body is working – is the thing to keep consistent, not pace. Trying to hold pace on a climb means working far harder than the situation warrants, spiking heart rate, and arriving at the top already deeply fatigued. Letting pace drop while keeping effort consistent is the correct approach, and it’s one that takes some mental adjustment to commit to.
Once you accept that pace will naturally slow on an uphill and that this is entirely correct, a significant amount of the psychological difficulty of hills disappears. You’re not struggling because you’re not fit enough. You’re slowing down because the hill requires it, and the runners around you are doing the same thing.
Uphill Technique: Small Changes, Big Difference
Running form on uphills is different from flat running form, and making a few specific adjustments makes the effort considerably more efficient. The most important change is posture: lean slightly into the hill from the ankles – not the waist – so that your body is working with the gradient rather than against it. Bending at the waist and hunching forward compresses the diaphragm, restricts breathing, and overloads the lower back. A tall, forward-angled posture from the ankles is much more sustainable.
Shorten your stride on the way up. Trying to bound up a hill with a long stride is exhausting and inefficient. Quick, shorter steps that land under your centre of mass are more economical and easier to sustain over a long climb. Think about picking your feet up rather than pushing off aggressively behind you.
Use your arms. On an uphill, arm drive becomes a genuine source of power – pumping your arms forward and back (not across your body) creates momentum that helps pull you up the gradient. If your arms are drooping or crossed at the front, you’re leaving free assistance on the table. Keep elbows at roughly 90 degrees, hands relaxed, and drive them with purpose on the harder sections.
Keep your gaze forward and slightly downward. Looking straight up at the top of the hill makes it feel further away and more daunting. Focusing on a point a few metres ahead keeps the task manageable and helps maintain good posture.
Downhill Running: The Part Everyone Gets Wrong
Most runners focus all their attention on the uphill and treat the downhill as a free recovery section. That’s a mistake in two ways: it misses the opportunity to make up time on the descent, and it often leads to a downhill technique that hammers the quads and knees and leaves you sore for the rest of the run.
The biggest downhill error is overstriding – reaching out with the foot well in front of the body and landing with a heavy heel strike. That braking motion on every step is exactly what causes the quadriceps soreness that runners associate with hilly races and the day after. It’s also slower than running with better form.
Good downhill technique involves leaning slightly forward with the hill, letting gravity assist rather than fighting it, and landing with a midfoot strike closer to beneath your centre of mass. Take slightly longer strides than on flat ground but keep them controlled. Let the descent happen at a natural, managed pace rather than either braking hard or simply letting momentum take over entirely.
The quadriceps absorb the impact on downhills, and if they’re not conditioned for that eccentric loading, they fatigue quickly and become sore. Building downhill running into training – not just uphill work – is how you develop the specific strength needed to run descents well.
Training Specifically for Hilly Routes
If you know your target race or training route involves significant hills, training specifically for that terrain makes a meaningful difference. The most obvious way to do this is to include hills in your regular training runs rather than routing around them. Seeking out hilly routes rather than avoiding them builds the relevant strength, improves cardiovascular fitness at higher intensities, and – importantly – makes hills feel progressively less daunting through familiarity.
Hill repetitions are a more targeted training tool. Find a hill of moderate gradient and reasonable length – somewhere between 200 and 400 metres is ideal for most runners – and run up it at a strong effort before jogging back down to recover. Repeating this six to ten times builds both strength and the specific cardiovascular capacity for climbing. It’s hard work, but it produces fast results and makes race-day hills feel considerably less severe by comparison.
Strength training that targets the glutes, hamstrings, and calves also pays dividends on hills. Single-leg exercises – lunges, step-ups, single-leg deadlifts – build the stability and power that uphill running demands, and they address the muscle imbalances that often develop in runners who train predominantly on flat surfaces.
Pacing Strategy for Hilly Race Courses
The most common pacing error in a hilly race is going out too fast on the early flat sections, arriving at the first climb already running on a compromised energy reserve, and then losing significant time – and morale – on the hills that follow. Starting conservatively and building into the race is sound advice for any event, but it’s especially true for courses with meaningful elevation.
Before race day, study the elevation profile carefully. Know where the climbs are, how long they last, and crucially – what comes after them. A climb followed by a long flat or downhill section can be attacked more confidently than one that leads directly into another ascent. Understanding the shape of the course lets you make informed pacing decisions rather than reacting to terrain as it appears.
On the climbs themselves, the effort-based pacing principle discussed earlier is the right guide. Let pace drop, keep effort controlled, and arrive at the top with something in reserve rather than having emptied the tank to maintain a number on your watch. The flat and downhill sections that follow are where you can recoup time – but only if you haven’t blown up on the way up.
The Mental Side of Hilly Running
A significant part of the difficulty of hills is psychological. Experienced runners know this and have strategies for managing it. Breaking a long climb into smaller sections – focusing on reaching the next lamppost or the bend ahead rather than the distant summit – is one of the most effective tools for keeping momentum going when a hill feels relentless.
Reframing how you think about hills also helps. Instead of registering a climb as something to be suffered through, try to approach it as an opportunity – to pass runners who are struggling with their technique, to bank fitness gains that flat running can’t provide, or simply to demonstrate to yourself that you can handle hard things. The runners who tend to perform best on hilly courses are not necessarily the fittest ones. They’re often the ones with the most composed relationship with difficulty.
Remind yourself that the hill ends. Every climb has a top, and the other side is either flat or downhill. Keeping that perspective when legs are heavy and breathing is laboured is a simple but genuinely effective mental anchor.
Make Hills Part of Your Running, Not an Exception to It
Runners who consistently avoid hills don’t just miss out on the fitness benefits – they also never develop the confidence and capability that makes hilly routes genuinely enjoyable. The city of Birmingham offers some outstanding running terrain precisely because it isn’t flat, and approaching that terrain with the right technique, the right training, and the right mindset transforms it from a source of dread into one of the more satisfying parts of running there.
Start by including one hilly route per week in your training. Add hill repetitions every fortnight. Work on the specific technique points – posture, stride length, arm drive on the way up; controlled, midfoot landing on the way down. Within a matter of weeks, hills that used to feel punishing will start to feel manageable, and manageable will eventually start to feel like an advantage.
The broader the variety of terrain you train on, the more well-rounded a runner you become – and the more confidently you can approach any race the calendar throws at you. Exploring the full range of Birmingham running events on offer throughout the year is a great way to find races that challenge you on varied terrain and push your hill running to the next level.
