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By Root 806 0

Keep your shoulders perpendicular to the trail and your center of gravity just in front of your hips. Try to keep your arms out slightly and bent so as to make micro-adjustments in balance on the fly, acting like an animal’s tail in midflight. In ultras you may feel sore in your upper arms and shoulders after a long hilly race or training run. This is typical, but the more you train and race, the stronger you become. Consider incorporating some upper-extremity strengthening, as well as core work, to be better balanced and strong in the later miles.

Most of all, have fun out there! If you are a beginner ultra runner or new to trails, then downhill running can be a real hoot as your abilities develop.

Dave Mackey has won numerous USATF national titles and twice earned USATF Ultrarunner of the Year honors. Mackey holds the course records at the Miwok 100k and Bandera 100k as well as the fastest known time* for a Grand Canyon double crossing.

* See the afterword for more on fastest known times.

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4

USING THE TRAINING PLANS

Chapters 5 and 6 outline six training plans, with each outlining a 24-week day-by-day plan. Before jumping into these plans, it’s important to know how to use them. Read on to determine if you have a sufficient training base to start preparing for an ultra or how to develop one if you don’t. Next, become familiar with how the training plans deal with training mileage and time, how you should add specificity to your training, how to incorporate speed work into the training plans (if you choose to do so), and how to properly approach rest.Then, examine the myriad ways to modify the training plans for your individual needs. Finally, learn the roles preparatory races, consistency, and self-coaching have in your ultra training.

Both this chapter and the two that follow rely heavily on chapters 2 and 3. If you have not read them, please do so prior to beginning any of the training plans in this book.

Presumption of Training Background

The training plans found in this book presume that you’ve run a marathon in the past year or have trained at 35 to 40 miles per week for at least four of the past six months. If you fall short of these criteria, please be patient and build a training base before embarking on your ultramarathon journey. Either gradually build your weekly mileage until you can comfortably run 35 to 40 miles per week for a few weeks, or follow a novice marathon training program in full regardless of whether or not you run the marathon. It is true that the first few weeks of chapter 5’s 50-mile-per-week plans start with mileage in the low-30-mile-per-week range. However, these are easy weeks in which you transition into consistent training. They should not be your longest-ever training weeks.

Time Versus Mileage Versus Trail Mileage

Most runners track their training volume by distance covered, whether that be in miles, kilometers, leagues, or parsecs. That said, a good number of runners base their training entirely on time. Both approaches are valid. Because this book must choose one measure, it will follow majority rules and use distance and, in particular, miles in prescribing overall training volume. The fact that most ultras are of a fixed length and that you should make discrete steps toward that distance also counsels toward logging training in miles.

If, however, you prefer training based on time, by all means continue to do so. Most days, simply translate the prescribed run from miles into minutes based on what you estimate your training pace to have been for an everyday training run in your last training cycle. This estimate should take into account the terrain on which you typically run, be it road or trail, flat or hilly. For long runs, estimate the necessary duration by using the estimated pace you would run if training (not racing) on the focus race course.

Training Specificity

This is a good place to remind you about training specificity. If your focus race is on trails, aim to run at least three or four of the weekly