Time For A Tune-up

I have a confession to make. I don’t really train for ultras anymore. My first 3-5 years were composed of a 20 week training block followed by a race then a month of downtime/recovery. Rinse and repeat. It was a pretty epic grind to build up my endurance base. Once I had finished 10-15 ultras including a number of hundreds, I dialed back my mileage as good enough was good enough. I’ve upped my mileage quite a bit in recent years, however that has more to do with the number of long ultras that I’m running each year (8-10) than actual training mileage. I use the races themselves as my “training” and just log some chill maintenance miles in between them.

Well, Ironstone 100K properly scared me straight. I was able to complete the race OK, but the climbs were much harder than I’m used to. Typically, I can slowly (ever so slowly) grind up the hills until I reach the top. At Ironstone, I was forced to take a couple short breaks (20-40 seconds) periodically on each of the larger climbs. I was also getting passed by quite a few runners as I inched my way up the slopes. I can usually hold my own on the climbs (pass some, get passed by others), but not on that day.

I’m not surprised by this and knew this would be an issue heading into the race. I have been training and racing a bunch of flat, road ultras during the first half of the year. Obviously, this won’t completely translate to a mountainous course profile. Looking back at my stats shows how woefully unprepared I was:

Now the truth of the matter is I could probably just show up to Eastern States and finish. The truth of the matter is also that this would end up being a horrific race day(s) experience for me. There’s a big difference between Ironstone’s 8,000ft of elevation gain over 4 large climbs and ES100’s 20,000ft over 14 large climbs. There’s really only one way to square this circle.

That Thing Called Training

One of my many personality quirks is that I don’t do things halfway. I’m wired to either be all in on something or completely out. This is why I maintain a run streak as I’m afraid that if I didn’t run every day, then it would be an every other week kind of thing. So I’m not just adding in a couple hill repeat days into my schedule. This is effectively all I’m doing now. I have a route on my local trails were I can get 2,000ft of elevation gain/loss in seven miles or about 1.5x ES100’s course profile. This is on a half mile section of trail though so turns into 90 minutes of short hill repeats.

Sustainability is key in any training program. What I’m doing is 100% not sustainable for months on end. But for two weeks? Yeah, this should work. I’ve executed this workout 3x so far and each of the runs have gotten progressively faster. I’ve likely maxed out the easy gains, however I’m hopeful the next 6 sessions will show some additional improvement. I’m being very intentional with my recovery and adding in rest days where I’d normally just run volume for 6 or 7 days per week. I’ll back off the workouts if my legs start feeling overly fatigued. So far, so good.

17 days until Eastern States. I’m almost tuned up. . .