Yesterday, in San Francisco, 100 women wearing the new adidas UltraBOOST X ran up a hilariously steep road called Filbert, which boasts an incline of 31.5% (17.5°). Then, we ran down Lombard Street, another fantastically steep hill featuring eight 'hairpin turns' (lols bends in the road so sharp, cars have to turn 180° to get down them). If it weren’t for the other 99 women – comprising Olympians, athletes, sports personalities and personal trainers – I would have stayed in bed eating biscuits. It’s amazing how manageable San Francisco hill sprints in the rain become when you’re surrounded by female energy, emotional support and women who run between 100m and 100 miles professionally yelling mantras to spur you on. I am a fair enough 10k runner but I can barely make it up the escalators on the underground because I only ever run on flat courses and I avoid hills like I avoid coriander. I haven’t built my muscles for incline, which I thought was fine, but turns out it’s not. As I learnt from Rio Olympic Games middle-distance runner Dominique Scott yesterday, if you only run forward and on flat, you only use one set of muscles, and by neglecting the others, you increase your risk of injury. Which could explain my dodgy knee. Fortunately, in the moment I realised this, I happened to be surrounded by Olympic runners and professional athletes, who gave me some advice…