Hill Workouts without Hills

AFAIK in hill training you increase intensity by going uphill maintaining speed. You can also increase intensity by running fast intervals. It doesn't work the same on your muscles as hills, but it does just as good for cardio training.

Take a look at HIIT, high intensity interval training, and see if you can use such workouts. You may also check out fartlek, but I think fartlek works better in a group.

BR

You've gotten good ideas here.  And Eric is on to something.  Your cardio system doesn't know the difference between hills and flats.  So what is the difference between training on hills and doing intervals on flat ground?  Just the amount of muscular effort relative to stride length.  In the end, hills are just intervals that focus more load on the glutes and calves.

Therefore another viable substitute would be intervals of the same duration and effort on a track along with strengthening exercises for glutes and calves.  Perhaps lunges and skipping drills.

You can be a world class hill runner without ever being exposed to hills (in theory).

I have a friend that does this and she said it has been a great place to train.  She goes on the weekends when there's not much traffic dowtown.

Treadmill is the best for that long an incline. 

On extreme climbs, like 10%, there is somewhat of a difference between the biomechanics of hill running that steep and the flats - you'll feel it even with the areas of soreness the day after. Still, if you have no hills, running faster is a pretty good alternative.

One of our local Tri RD's has been planning a parking garage 5k.  This is a very flat city... we don't do hills.  I expect a lot of carnage if he ever gets that race going.

You must have one hill somewhere right?  I have a great, great workout that I've done.  About 2 miles from my house is a nice steep hill under a powerline.  I jog over there and do a hill routine then jog back.

My hill routine is to run about 90% of top speed to the top.  For this hill it is about one minute.  Then brisk walk back down, bounce step/turnaround at a spot (pick one spot to not cheat yourself), the back up again.  20 times. 

I did find that it gave me power for hills on race runs. 

I would give the finger to a 5m hill workout myself and just do a run with some hills and maybe repeat them a few times or do a treadmill workout with varying incline.  Life is too short.