I had not done a lot of hill training before participating in a hill workout offered by my group training program for marathoners and half marathoners.
Here are four of many lessons that I learned -- or re-learned, actually -- from this one hill workout, which was held at 6:30 PM on a weekday.
Lesson #1 - Running hills works different muscles.
My glutes were sore the next morning -- with the kind of soreness that I never get from running the flat streets of Houston.
This is a good example of why it is important to mix up one's running and to cross-train.
Lesson #2 - A group can be motivating.
I truly believe that I would not have worked myself as hard on those hills had I been on my own.
We probably had 50 to 100 people from my group training program at that workout.
And our head coach was there to tell us when to run, when to take a break, and how hard to push ourselves.
Running with others up and down those hills, and hearing our head coach in the background, made me push myself harder.
Lesson #3 - Hills exist in the flattest of cities.
For example, there are hills in Houston, but you have to know where to find them.
This particular workout was based in a flooding-overflow area on the bank of one of Houston's bayous.
The area is grassy and dotted with large trees.
The rise from this overflow area to the street level has an incline angle that sometimes is as high as 45 degrees, which is quite steep.
I know runners who use multi-level parking structures for their hill training.
They run up and down the ramps of these structures early in the morning or late in the evening.
And they claim that ramp running can be an excellent substitute for running up and down natural hills or other man-made hills (such as a road that dips 20 feet below street level so that the drivers on that road need not stop at the intersecting road).
Lesson #4 - Evening running is not for everyone.
Evening running is not for me.
I knew this, just like I knew the other lessons here.
But I am still glad that I participated in this hill workout.
It reminded me that I like to train in the morning because:

• I am a morning person.
  
• Most races start early in the morning.
  
• It gives my body all day to recuperate before I go to bed (so that I continue to move and stretch sore muscles instead of sleeping on them).
  

If you are unsure about your best time of day to run, then try evening running as well as mid-day running and morning running.
And stick with what works for you!