Am I Suited to Running Especially Uphills?

"I have one leg longer than the other and high arches on my feet, which make prolonged walking and even a short period of running painful. I'm fine running on flat ground, steady and slow, but I struggle on hills — and sometimes, because of the camber of the path, I feel lopsided. In a half marathon, I had to walk part of it, because my walking pace was quicker than I could manage running on the terrain that day. Am I suited to running, and do I just need to keep training to cover a long distance without walking — or should I stick to walking?

– Maria, Halesowen

Answer by Dominique: Hi Maria,
Thanks for your question about running with one leg longer than the other and high arches. It's a combination that deserves a proper answer.

Yes — a leg length discrepancy that's manageable on flat ground often becomes noticeable on hills and camber. Road camber adds to the difference on one side and reduces it on the other, and inclines load your shorter and longer leg differently than flat ground does. This is a routing-and-training question as much as a medical one.

I'll break my response down as follows:

1. Why Hills and Camber Make It Worse
2. What to Change About How You Run and Route Today
3. Heel Lifts — and When They Actually Help

1. Why Hills and Camber Make It Worse

Here's what's actually happening. On flat ground, an uneven leg length rarely causes much trouble — your gait adapts, and the difference stays small enough to absorb. Add an incline, though, and the loading pattern changes: your shorter leg has to work harder to reach the ground on each stride, while your longer leg takes more of the impact on the way down.

Camber compounds this further. Most roads are built with a slope for drainage — the crown runs down the centre — so running on either side effectively lengthens the leg on the downhill side of that slope and shortens the one on the uphill side, on top of the discrepancy you already have. Face one way and the two effects partly cancel out. Face the other, and they stack.

That's exactly why you can feel fine on a flat, even track and lopsided on a cambered street. You're not imagining it, and it isn't just fitness. Under this kind of repeated, uneven load, research links leg length differences most often to hip pain and stress fractures, with lower back pain also reported, though the evidence on that one is mixed. Plenty of runners with a small difference never have a problem, and none of this is inevitable — but they're why it's worth changing how you run and route, not just pushing through.

2. What to Change About How You Run and Route Today

You don't need a diagnosis to start making this easier. Three changes, and you can make all of them this week:

Run the crown of the road, not the edge. When traffic and safety allow, staying close to the centre keeps camber's effect close to neutral, instead of loading one side of your body every single stride.

Alternate sides on out-and-back routes. If you can't run the crown, swap which side of the road faces uphill on the way out and on the way back, so the load evens out over the run instead of compounding in one direction the whole way.

Treat hills with a run/walk approach. Walking the steepest sections isn't giving up — it's pacing. What you did in your half marathon, Maria, wasn't a failure. It was the right call on the day, and it's worth planning for on purpose next time rather than something to apologise for.

Alongside your routes, build targeted strength: hip abductor and glute medius work is a sensible, low-risk place to start. I'm not aware of research showing it fixes leg-length-related symptoms specifically, and it won't change the length difference itself — but strong hips help your pelvis stay level on one leg, which is where the difference shows up on hills.

3. Heel Lifts — and When They Actually Help

The old advice on this page was simply to consider a heel lift. That's not wrong, exactly — but it skips a step that matters.

A heel or sole lift is typically the right call for a confirmed structural leg length difference — an actual difference in bone length — above a real, measured threshold. It isn't the first thing to try for a difference nobody has properly measured yet. That's because not every leg length difference is structural. Some are functional: caused by pelvic tilt, tight muscles, or foot mechanics that mimic a length difference without one actually being there. A structural difference and a functional one need different fixes, which is exactly why buying a lift online before you know which one you have is the wrong order to do things in.

This is the kind of judgement call I'd make: get assessed before you buy anything. A podiatrist or sports physiotherapist can do this properly — it typically involves a measured leg-length assessment plus gait or video analysis, so you walk away knowing which type of difference you actually have, instead of guessing.

Related Injury Risks and Getting a Proper Check

I'm not a doctor, and I don't know your full physical picture — so treat this as coaching advice, not a diagnosis. If you're managing ongoing pain, particularly anything matching iliotibial band syndrome, hip pain, or lower back pain, get it looked at properly rather than running through it.

For active pain, my Running Injury Helpline is the place to start. And if this is a physical limiter you'll be training around for the long term — not just a one-off question about a single race — training around hills long-term covers the fuller framework for building hill sessions into your routine without aggravating it further.
So — is running still on the table for you, Maria? Yes. Run the crown where you can, alternate your route, treat hills as run/walk terrain rather than a test, and add the strength work above before you consider anything else. If a proper assessment then says a lift is right for you, get one. Until then, this is entirely trainable.

Kind regards,
Dominique

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