When I trained for my first 10k race seven years ago, I was acutely aware that there was a big hill half way round the race route. I lived of the side of this hill and avoided even walking up it. I knew how big it was. So I did the obvious thing and avoided it in all of my training.

Come race day, the hill appeared and I shuffled my way up it. I made it to the top, but it wasn’t pretty. I stopped to recover for a moment before continuing.

My beginner runners train on Hampstead Heath. It’s a place that’s got plenty of hills, but we spend most of out time avoiding them. My runners are just starting out and running for just a couple of minutes at a time, and making them run on a gradient wouldn’t help their confidence in those early weeks. But as they get more competent and their runs progress, I introduce them to the hills.

Each beginners course graduates by running the Hampstead Heath parkrun. The route of this doesn’t shy away from the hills, it goes most of the way up Parliament Hill twice. So unlike my own preparation as a beginner runner – they face the hills head on. Just one session of training with a hill can make the difference to them. As well as fitness and strength, hill running involves a lot of technique and getting this technique right can make running up those hills a lot easier.

As Bournemouth Marathon gets closer, I’ve been reading more race reports. I vaguely knew there was a bit of a hill somewhere in the race when I signed up, but didn’t give it much thought. Reading these reports, the two hills in the latter stages didn’t sound too fun. So unlike that first 10k, I’ve been preparing for them.

Last week my plan was to run a session of 4 x 1.5 mile reps. But instead of doing these in the flatter park near my house, I went to Finsbury Park instead. One lap of Finsbury Park is 1.5 miles (perfect) but it also has a hill in it which you run up twice in one lap. It would be good Bournemouth prep.

I worked out the lap times I needed to hit, allowed a little for the hill and then started running. And something unexpected happened – I came in under the original (non-hill adjusted) pace.

We sometimes overlook how important the mental side of training is. That one session won’t have done a massive amount for my fitness – it’s just one part of a bigger jigsaw of marathon training. But keeping a pace running up and down hills did a huge amount for my confidence in going into Bournemouth. With a few more sessions like that (and including a big ass hill in the end of my long run route a few times) I’ll hopefully go into the marathon ready to take on those hills and not scared of them.