I'm a firm believer that both uphill and downhill training or repeats are beneficial to any running program whether you are a sprinter, middle distance runner, distance runner, or marathoner. Running on hills will give you confidence in your abilities, build strength and speed.
A recent publication (see link below) concluded, "runners can assume that any form of high-intensity uphill interval training will benefit 5-km time-trial performance." Based on the design of this study, I feel the authors have over stated their results. I believe to conclude that uphill interval training improves 5km times this study needed to include more test groups: 1)that did not do any intervals ( easy distance running),but continued to run, 2) one group that did not do uphill intervals, but did track intervals, 3) and one group that did no intervals, but threshold runs. For example if groups 1,2 and 3 did not show 5km time trial improvement over the same time period, then they could conclude uphill interval trianing is the best way to improve 5km time. If group 1 did not show improvement, but group 2&3 did, there published conclusion would be support and a comparison could be made between other training method. However, if group 1 showed improvement, there existing conclusions would not stand.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Effects+of+Different+Uphill+Interval-Training+Programs+on+Running+Economy+and+Performance.
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