Statistical Overview for the past three weeks:
Total Time Spent Running: 79 hours
Total Mileage Completed: 354 miles
Average time spent per day: 3 1/4 hours
Average Distance Run per day: 17 miles
Longest run, hours: 13 hours
Longest Run, miles: 45 miles
I typically split my training into four week blocks that include three hard weeks that build upon each other, and then an easy week. During the three hard weeks I will usually take no days off and then take two days off during the easy week. If I have time, I stack these four week blocks on top of one another and build through each four week cycle as well as through the three weeks in each block.
I've only completed one structured four week block for my upcoming race, but in between the Ouray 100 on July 31 and the starting of hard training once again on September 13, I did include a few weeks long build period after taking pretty much the first two weeks of the month of August to recover. Though my build period for this training cycle was not structured (meaning I did not plan any of the mileage out in advance), it was still important for the success of my intense training block.
Training is one of those things that seems simple but really is like a complicated art form. Especially in a sport like ultra-running that is so demanding both mentally and physically, it is treacherously easy to overtrain. I try to live by the mantra, taken from the book Training for the Uphill Athlete, that it is "better to be a little undertrained, than even a tiny bit overtrained." But how do you know you are overtraining? That is a question that every athlete wants to have an answer for but nobody really does. Knowing your own body and figuring out how you personally adapt to stressors is the best way to avoid overtraining. For me, I try to think about the adaptation zone as a good guide to tell if I am getting close to being overtrained.
The adaptation zone is the sweet spot in training where you are stressing your body enough that it is building and improving throughout a training cycle. Even though the last week of my three hard weeks is always really tough, I want to feel like I am doing a little bit better on all of my runs than in the previous two weeks. In this past cycle, the last run I did for my hard weeks was 40 miles with about 6,000 feet of vertical gain. The previous week I'd run 45 at a higher elevation and with about 10,000 feet of gain, albeit at the end of a week that was significantly easier than what led up to the 40. Comparing the two runs directly is a little screwy due to the factors of altitude and vertical gain, however I felt distinctly stronger on the second 40 miler even though I had a further week of hard training under my belt. Improving while under stress is a sign to me, that I am hitting my adaptation zone.
Even so, it can be like treading a knife edge between the perfect amount of difficulty and too much training. The balance is not the same for each individual athlete and unfortunately, one can really only learn from experience. Luckily, I've never really stepped over the boundary into overtraining so much that it caused problems, but I can certainly see how it would be easy to make that mistake. Zach Bitter, former 100 mile speed world record holder, has described training as a process of micro-stressing the body. You create just enough challenge and difficulty to force your body to respond and grow stronger. Micro-stressors and the adaptation zone are two concepts that go hand-in-hand and can be useful to keep in mind when crafting structured training blocks.
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 |
103 miles | 117 miles | 132 miles |
26 hours | 26 hours | 27 hours |
During the past three weeks, I feel like I really nailed what I needed to do to get myself ready for the longest race of my career so far: 150 miles through the Texas Hill Country on October 22. My weeks built in both volume and intensity, and like I mentioned before, I improved my pace and the way I felt on my long runs throughout the process. Putting in lots of time on feet is, in my opinion, simply the best way to ready oneself for the challenge of pushing your limits beyond what you've achieved before. Training is, after all, supposed to try to replicate the scenarios of race day as best as possible. For ultrarunning, that's not totally possible since it would be unwise to make yourself so tired in training that you felt like you'd run 100 miles, however there are techniques you can use to add in mental and physical challenges to mimic the situations of a race. For instance, in this past cycle, I purposely put my longest runs at the end of my weeks to make sure I was starting them off feeling pretty tired (but not overtrained). Again, I won't be as tired as I will be a mile 100 of my upcoming race, but giving yourself that extra mental challenge to wake up early and go run 40 miles on a Sunday is a good way to get your mind ready for the challenge of continuing on when your body is screaming to stop.
One of the things I love about ultrarunning is that the question of how exactly to train for them is still up in the air. Nobody has an exact science or can give you a template for a training plan that will work perfectly. Even super successful ultrarunners have wildly different strategies. Zach Bitter, who I mentioned previously, runs high volume (120-150 miles), fast weeks to prepare for his long, but quick races. Surpassing even Bitter in volume, Pete Kostelnick, the record holder for the trans-continental run from San Francisco to New York, is able to put in 180-200 mile weeks with regularity. Mike McKnight, the best 200 mile runner in North America, only runs about 80 miles per week and does that really consistently for long stretches of time. And Darcy Piceu, a former Hardrock 100 winner, literally measures nothing. She just goes by feel and runs whatever she feels like doing on any given day.
It's frankly bizarre that successful athletes can have such incredibly different approaches. In the world of fast marathons, most of the runners will be doing similar things. The same cannot be said for ultrarunning and that is just one piece of the picture that makes ultras so exciting. So the question becomes, am I training correctly? Only results will show the answer. If I get to Texas and I just feel tired in my whole race, it's possible I overtrained. But if I feel stronger than I ever have before, perhaps I nailed it. Putting in so much time, love, and passion into training for a result that is far from guaranteed is somewhat nerve-wracking. But it's also exciting and it's the reason that we compete in this absolutely crazy, bonkers sport. I feel really confident heading into the Cactus Rose 150 in Texas and I'm excited to see what I can do. With the Cocodona 250 coming up in May 2022, I hope this will be a great learning experience to prepare me for the first 200+ miler of my life. I believe the longer the race goes on, the more it plays to my strength and this will be the first real test of that conviction. Let's see how the training pays off!
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