First off, I recommend finding various hills that offer variety and challenge. You don't want to keep going up and down the same Mountain time after time. Plus you want different lengths of inclines to give you different workouts to work around your schedule.

So if you have only an hour or so, you have a short hill you can charge up. If you are looking to have along workout you also have larger hills.

Variety is the spice of life and it's very key to your success.

Second, be sure to not over do the long up hill climbs when you first start off.

Hill training is a great way to add variety to your current workout, but I wouldn't recommend you use it exclusively. Hill training can be very intense and punishing if you are new to it.

I recommend using elevatoin training for roughly 30 minutes to an hour once a week to start and then to add a second shorter hill training workout after a month to six weeks.

If you really want to make your hill training more intense use a stop watch and time yourself on how fast you go up. As long as you keep trying to beat that time, you will have the motivation to keep breaking your plateaus.

If you do find yourself hitting a plateau and you keep holding the same time, I recommend finding a different hill to shake things up.

The beauty of going up a hill is that it's crazy simple, dirt cheap and incredibly effective. It doesn't matter how you go up the hill either. You can run up, ride a bike up, walk up or hike at a good pace.

If you would like to add some challenge to the same hill simply wear a back pack with 10 pounds in it or carry a weight up. A little weight goes a long way so start off light and then progress to a heavier weight.

I don't usually recommend your workouts last longer than an hour. If you do find yourself climbing for longer than an hour (like hiking up a mountain) be sure you have plenty of food and water with you.

Also keep in mind that the weather can be different at higher elevations so bring and clothing you might need at higher altitudes.