• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

2

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF ULTRAMARATHON TRAINING

This chapter discusses the major elements of ultramarathon training. You’ll first learn about the importance of training volume and long runs as well as how to incorporate back-to-back long runs and speed work into your training. Ultra training isn’t always about doing more, so recovery and burnout are discussed at length. Finally, the chapter concludes with a look at why you might want to consider working with a coach as you prepare for an ultra.

Turn Up the Training Volume

There is perhaps no better predictor of ultramarathon success than total training volume. Make consistent, significant mileage a primary goal throughout your ultramarathon training along with logging your long runs. You don’t want to overdo it, but one of the best ways to run better at any race length, and especially in ultras, is to run more.

The good news regarding weekly mileage, however, is that you’ll be fine whatever your weekly mileage is so long as you get your long runs in. Really. You can complete an ultra and do so with great success without logging more miles on your feet than you do in your car.

Training Pace

Before diving into the details of how much you should be running, there’s the critical or, as it turns out, not so critical factor in your day-to-day training—your standard training pace. My advice? Run comfortably. With the exception of a steep hill here or there, there is no excuse for not being able to talk continually during the vast majority of your training. Unless you are running a road 50k, your average race day pace will likely be slower than your training pace. If you’re a competitve runner or a driven personality, it’s more likely that you are running too fast during your training runs than too slow.

Weekly Mileage

On the low-mileage end, it would be beneficial, or at least make for a better experience, if you were running at least 35 to 40 miles per week before attempting an ultramarathon. Regular weekly tallies around 50 miles often lead to strong, comfortable ultra finishes. If you log upward of eight weeks near 70 miles per week, you’ll be in top form and, if you’ve had success at other distances, will likely be competitive at many ultras. As for running 100 miles or more per week, very few ultrarunners do so, and many of them are the very best in the sport.

If you’re an experienced distance runner—that is, someone who’s consistently trained for at least a few years—and you’ve recently trained for a marathon, aim to run at least as many miles per week in your peak ultramarathon training as you did in your peak marathon training. Likewise, other weeks in your training program should be similar to or slightly higher than their corresponding weeks in your marathon-training schedule.

If you’re a newer runner, if you have bumped up to the marathon distance in the past year, or if you’ve been relatively injury-free at a mileage plateau for a few years, it might now be the time to increase your mileage by 10 miles per week during your peak training.

It can be tempting to attempt a massive jump in overall training volume from one season* to the next.

* By a season, I mean five or six months of training followed by a rest period.

Such a jump is risky and ill-advised. Instead, take a long view in which you sequentially increase mileage over multiple seasons. While I can’t offer a hard-and-fast rule, I wouldn’t advise an experienced runner to increase his or her season-over-season volume by much more than 20 percent. That means a 50-mile-per-week runner could bump up to 60 miles per week, and a 70-mile-per-week runner could target 85 miles per week. Newer runners who have logged 40 or fewer miles per week in previous seasons may be able to increase their mileage more dramatically on a percentage basis. It’s not uncommon for a rapidly improving, less experienced runner to increase his or her mileage by 10 or even 20 miles per week from one season to the next.

Increasing Weekly Mileage and the 10 Percent Rule

Whether you make