The Checkup: Running Hills—Any Hills—Improves Speed, Study Finds

• With Broad Street now officially less than a month away (eek!), a lot of runners are starting to worry about their race-day performance. If you’re aiming to PR, I have two words for you: hill repeats. Runner’s World reports on a new study out of New Zealand which found that hill workouts will absolutely, positively improve your running performance no matter what kind of hills you train on (long and gradual, short and steep, etc.) and how you train on them (all-out sprints, hard run, jog). In the study, 20 runners were assigned one of five different hill workouts to train with for six weeks. At the beginning and end of the study, they ran 5K time trials to compare their speeds. Researchers found that all runners improved their 5K times by about 2 percent, regardless of which hill workout plan they employed. As RW points out, “For a 20:00 5K runner, an improvement of 2% would mean running 19:36.” And that’s in just six weeks—impressive, eh? More here.

• In the category of Things You Probably Already Knew, a new study found that running, more than walking, helps people lose weight. For people on the upper end of the BMI chart, the study found, those who stuck with running lost 90 percent more weight than people who walked for fitness. More here.

• When you clock out for your lunch hour today, remember this: eat slowly. A new study found that eating slowly at lunch (i.e. chewing each bite for 30 seconds) results in less mid-afternoon snacking. Men’s Health has more.

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