We've all done it. You open the race website, scroll to the course profile, and see the number: 2,000m (6,560ft) of climbing. Then you immediately think, there's not a hill in sight where I live!

Most runners in the UK, and plenty in the US, live nowhere near a mountain, or a 60-second hill effort for that matter. The good news is that you can build most of what a hilly race demands without a return flight to Chamonix!

In this article we explain how much climbing you actually need, how far a treadmill, a StairMaster or a motorway bridge can practically take you, and where the weighted vest evidence really sits. Most importantly, we look at how to structure your week around the terrain and facilities you've actually got, with three templates for flat, rolling and hilly areas.

What does a hilly race actually ask of you?

Trail and ultra running can crudely be split into four skill sets: flat running, uphill running, downhill running and uphill walking, or hiking. Each needs its own technique, and all four have to come together on the day.

Elevation is where most people's attention turns when they think about ultras, and for good reason. On most mountainous courses you will spend a huge share of the race going uphill. Coach Scott Johnston points out that when Ruth Croft set the women's course record of 8:03 at the 2024 Transvulcania, a 73km (45-mile) race on La Palma, she spent over five hours, around 66% of her time, climbing.

So, how much climbing do you actually need in training?

A crude but common rule of thumb is to match your race's total climbing in your biggest training week, with half to two-thirds of it coming from your weekend long runs. Across a four to six week hill block, many coaches settle for 50 to 80% of race climbing per week. Closer to race day, your long runs should start to approach the climbing density of the race itself.

To see what that means for your race, start by dividing your race's total climbing by its distance. A 50km race with 2,000m of climbing has 40m of climbing per kilometre (about 211ft per mile). That number tells you far more about what the race will feel like than the headline figure does. As a rough guide, runs under about 10m per km (50ft per mile) are effectively flat, 10 to 30m per km is rolling, 30 to 50m per km is hilly, and anything above that is mountainous.

But what if you don't have a single hill in sight?

Can a treadmill replace hills?

The uphill treadmill is an incredibly efficient way to train the uphill segments of an ultra.

For example, walking briskly at 5km/h (3.1mph) on a 15% incline gives you roughly 750m (2,460ft) of climbing an hour. That can save hours of logistics, especially for races where the climbs last for hours. It's also an easy place to practise your race nutrition and, most importantly, it fits into an already busy schedule. And it can be easier to practise your running form on a controlled surface: it really encourages a light-on-your-feet stride, with a relaxed upper body and no tension through the hips.

Here are a few ways you can use the treadmill in your training:

• Treadmill hike. 45 to 60 minutes at maximum incline, walking as briskly as you can without running, hands off the rails. This is your climbing volume session, typically done in Zone 2.

• Incline intervals. 6 to 8 × 3 minutes running at a hard effort, with 2 minutes easy at 1%. For most athletes 8% tends to be the sweet spot, with 4 to 5% a good range for beginners or the start of a training cycle. Save gradients of 9 to 12% for shorter efforts of 1 to 2 minutes, since your form really has to change beyond that!

• Race simulation. Pull up your race's elevation profile and copy its biggest climbs, adjusting the incline as the profile changes.

Some limitations

Most gym treadmills top out at 12 to 15%, and most mountainous ultras will routinely be steeper than 25%. Research by Nicola Giovanelli and colleagues found that above an incline of about 28%, walking uses over 8% less energy than running at the same speed. That's why most people around you power hike the steep climbs on race day. Specialist incline trainers go up to 40%, but they're rare!

Treadmills, of course, can't teach you foot placement on rocks and roots or test your stability. Most crucially, most treadmills will only decline 3 to 6%, which is very gentle compared with the descents in most trail races (more on that below!).

It's also worth noting that every machine is calibrated slightly differently, so try not to treat the numbers as an exact gauge of fitness, especially if you switch between machines. Anchor more on heart rate and feel.

What hill repeats work best?

Kyle Barnes and colleagues tested five different uphill interval programmes in well-trained runners, on gradients of 10 to 15%. Across all of them, 5km time-trial performance improved by an average of 2% in six weeks. Their conclusion was refreshingly simple: until more data come in, runners can assume that any high-intensity uphill interval training will help.

There's an injury argument too. Jinger Gottschall and Rodger Kram found that on a 9° (about 16%) uphill, the impact peak you get when your foot hits the ground disappeared altogether, while the forward push increased by 75%. So harder efforts uphill likely mean fewer impact injuries and more consistent training.

For trail racing, three structures cover most of what you need:

• Short and steep. 8 to 10 × 10 to 15 seconds as hard as you can up the steepest slope you have, walking back down. This builds power and economy, needs only 20m (65ft) of hill, and barely tires you.

• Classic hill intervals. Anything from 45 seconds to 3 minutes at a hard but controlled effort, jogging back down. Use 45 to 60 seconds for VO2max-type efforts, 90 seconds to 2 minutes for 10km-type efforts, and up to 3 minutes for a more high-end aerobic workout. All of it works on a treadmill if your local hill isn't long enough.

• Sustained climbs and hike-and-run repeats. Anything from 10 to 20 minutes of continuous threshold effort to 45 to 75 minutes in Zone 2, going up and down the longest hill you have and alternating running and power hiking on the way up. This is the volume session. Thirty climbs of a 20m hill is 600m (1,970ft) of climbing, and it teaches you to hike with intent.

On every one of these, if you're outside, the best recovery is running back down the hill, since that gives you a downhill stimulus that is invaluable (see below).

Are stairs, StairMasters and bridges worth it?

Yes, and they are criminally underused.

A typical storey is about 3m (10ft), so a ten-storey stairwell gives you around 30m (100ft) per lap. Twenty laps is 600m (1,970ft). Multi-storey car parks, stadium steps, footbridges, railway embankments and motorway bridges all work. If you live in a city, the climbing is usually there. It just doesn't look like a hill.

Stairs are steeper and more regular than any trail, so they build strength and hiking-style climbing well. Take them one at a time for cadence and two at a time for hip power.

The StairMaster deserves a special mention. It's a fantastic tool for practising long, steady climbing efforts, and most gyms have them in abundance. Keep your hands light on the rails, or off them when your balance allows, stand tall, take deliberate steps and let your legs carry the load. It can also be a sensible low-impact alternative to adding another hard downhill run when your legs are already carrying a big training load. Like the treadmill, over time you can add intervals, or even a weighted vest (see below).

As a general guide, here's how much climbing a StairMaster can give you:

• Beginner to moderate: about 40 steps per minute, roughly 490m (1,600ft) an hour.

• Steady uphill: about 55 steps per minute, roughly 670m (2,200ft) an hour.

• Hard effort: about 75 steps per minute, roughly 915m (3,000ft) an hour.

One rule worth sticking to with real stairs: walk or run down rather than taking the lift. Every flight down is descending practice.

Is a weighted vest worth it?

The honest answer is: probably for hiking, probably not for running.

The study most often quoted is about warming up, not training. Strides in a weighted vest gave a short-term boost to running economy, which isn't proof that training in one makes you a better climber.

What we don't yet have is good long-term evidence that weeks of vest training improves trail race performance.

There's no doubt however that some of the elite runners in the sport use weighted vests in training. Tom Evans, the 2025 UTMB champion, has described climbing about 1,000m (3,280ft) of the Chamonix vertical kilometre route with a 15kg pack at around tempo effort, then dropping the pack at the top and running back down without it. This kind of muscular endurance training is quite advanced, and in almost all cases we wouldn't advise running downhill in a weighted vest given the impact.

Where a vest does make practical sense:

• On a treadmill or StairMaster. Adding load to a hiking session raises the climbing demand when you can't raise the incline any further.

• As your race pack. Most trail races require you to carry water, food and kit. Training in your loaded race pack is simply specific, and it's the one load you know you'll be carrying on race day.

Save anything heavier than your usual race pack for more advanced sessions in the specific phase of your training, and allow for significant recovery after them. Keep it off your running volume and your descents. Extra load on the way down adds more of exactly the muscle damage you're trying to manage.

Why is descending harder to replicate than climbing?

Because climbing mostly asks for fitness and strength, which you can build anywhere. Descending asks for something that only descending builds.

As we covered in our downhill running guide, running downhill makes your quads produce force while they are being lengthened, and this is about the most damaging thing a muscle routinely does. Each time your foot strikes the ground on the flat, your leg takes roughly two to three times your body weight. In the same Gottschall and Kram study, running down a 9° (about 16%) slope increased the impact peaks by 54% and the braking forces by 73% compared with the flat. Is it any wonder your quads get sore after a big descent?

This is something flat running cannot replicate and where many flatland runners arrive at the race aerobically fit to climbs but not specifically conditioned for the descents.

The good news from that article still applies. The protection builds quickly, and two or three proper descending sessions in the weeks before a race give you most of it. And you don't need a long, technical trail to get them:

• Run every descent you have. On hill repeats, jog or run the way back down at close to race effort rather than walking it. Short hill, many reps, lots of descending.

• Take the stairs down. Controlled stair descents load the quads in the same lengthening way.

• Add box step-downs and drop landings. Step off a low box and land softly, absorbing the landing through your quads. A few sets in the gym train the same lengthening strength without needing a hill.

• Plan a trip if you can. A weekend in hillier country four to six weeks out, with one or two long descents, is worth more for a mountain race than almost any session you can do at home.

How do you structure a week when your terrain doesn't cooperate?

Of course, this will depend on the training period you're in. But most weeks in the build and specific phases of training (within three months of your key race) will normally include a longer run, a session focused on climbing, a strength session and some descent training when available, with everything else around this being easy. Our guides to training load management and easy running explain why the easy days matter as much as the climbing. It all counts!

This is also where a training plan written in advance falls down. It can tell you to do hill repeats on Tuesday. It doesn't know whether you've got a hill, a stairwell or a treadmill, or that the only real hill is 40 minutes' drive away. The session has to fit the terrain you actually have.

Everyone is an individual, so treat these as starting points. Each is a typical week in the final six to eight weeks before a 50km race with about 2,000m of climbing.

Template 1: Flat (treadmill, StairMaster, stairs, bridges)

• Tuesday: Incline intervals on the treadmill, 6 to 8 × 3 minutes at a medium-hard effort at around 8%.

• Wednesday: Easy run on the flat, plus strength work with step-downs and split squats.

• Thursday: Stair or bridge session, 45 to 60 minutes up and down, running every descent.

• Saturday: Long run on your hilliest route, followed by a 30 to 45 minute treadmill or StairMaster hike in your loaded race pack.

• Sunday: Easy run on the flat.

Template 2: Rolling (short hills of 20 to 60m)

• Tuesday: Classic hill intervals, 8 × 60 to 90 seconds hard, running back down.

• Wednesday: Easy run on the flat, plus strength work.

• Thursday: Hill hike-and-run repeats, 60 minutes continuous on your longest hill.

• Saturday: Long run looping every hill you can link together, aiming for your race's climbing density in the final hour.

• Sunday: Easy run, with short and steep hill sprints at the end.

Template 3: Hilly (climbs of 100m or more)

• Tuesday: Long climbing intervals, 3 to 4 × 8 to 10 minutes at a strong but sustainable effort, with easy descents.

• Wednesday: Easy run on the flattest route you can find, plus strength work.

• Thursday: Easy hilly run, hiking the steepest sections the way you will in the race.

• Saturday: Long run matching your race's climbing density, practising descents at race effort.

• Sunday: Easy back-to-back run on trail, short enough to stay easy.

Key Takeaways

• Mountain races ask for four skills: flat running, uphill running, downhill running and hiking. On a course like Transvulcania, around two-thirds of a race can be spent climbing.

• Think in climbing density, not totals. Divide your race's climbing by its distance: a 50km race with 2,000m of climbing has 40m per km (211ft per mile), which counts as hilly.

• The uphill treadmill is an incredibly efficient tool. A brisk 15% treadmill hike gives you roughly 750m (2,460ft) of climbing an hour. Machines vary, so anchor on heart rate and feel.

• Any high-intensity uphill interval training helps. Six weeks of uphill intervals improved 5km performance by 2% on average, so a short hill is enough, and the impact is much less too.

• The weighted vest evidence is mostly about warm-ups. Use one for hiking sessions or train in your loaded race pack, but keep it off your running volume and descents.

• Descending is the part you can't fake. Run every descent you have, take the stairs down, add step-downs and eccentric strength work, and get two or three proper descending sessions in before race day.

• Most weeks in the build need a longer run, a climbing session, a strength session and some descent training, with everything else easy.

You don't need mountains to train for a mountain race. You need to know which parts you can build anywhere, which part you can't, and a week that fits the terrain you've actually got.

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