Running hills isn’t fun. It’s not designed to be fun. But it does serve a purpose in your workouts, especially in preparation for the Run to The Shrine at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

It’s a 5K or 10K run. But either way, you’ll be hauling up the hill that leads to the Will Rogers Shrine. To get us all prepared, we got some expert advice from personal trainer and group fitness instructor Andrea Cespedes, with Fitness Between Friends. Here’s her advice for how to become a better runner. And you can do it on the treadmill.

Warm up for 5 to 10 minutes at a comfortable jog or even a light walk.

Then run five 30-second speed drills – progressively going faster for each one. Rest 30 seconds between each of them. Your speed for the last 30-second drill should be uncomfortable, but not at a burn-out level.

Begin your hill routine by first finding a manageable pace that you can maintain pretty easily on an incline of 1 percent. Think of this “easy” pace this way: if you ran on this minor incline at this pace for 45 minutes, you would get a workout, but have a lot of juice leftover.

Once you find the pace — after about 2 minutes — make it your mission to stick it for the entire workout.

Run 1 minute up an incline of 6. Recover at an incline of 1 percent for 1 minute.

Run 2 minutes up an incline of 5. Recover at an incline of 1 percent for 2 minutes.

Run 3 minutes up an incline of 4. Recover at an incline of 1 percent for 3 minutes.

Run 4 minutes up an incline of 3. Recover at an incline of 1 percent for 4 minutes.

Run up an incline of 5 for 1 minute, reduce to an incline of 4 for another minute, reduce to an incline of 3 for the last 2 minutes.

Recover at an incline of 1 percent for 5 minutes