I was planning to use the Viaduct 100M race last weekend as the primary training stimulus leading into Eastern States, however the race ended up being cancelled due to downed trees on the course. I think I’ve gotten faster at the hundred mile distance this year due to all the hundreds that I’ve been running so wanted to get in that volume, but didn’t want to necessarily do a hundred on my own. I settled on four straight days of 25 milers with 3,000 feet of elevation gain per mile. So I’d get a hundred miles and 12k of elevation in 4 days vs. the hundred and 4k at Viaduct. My plan B wouldn’t be a perfect replacement, however I felt like it would be in the general ballpark from an endurance stimulus standpoint.
My biggest decision after settling on this plan would be how to pace it. My normal long run pace for that type of elevation is in the 10-10:30 minute range. I obviously couldn’t do that for four straight days. My hundred mile pace for that type of elevation gain/loss is about 14 minutes based on my More Miles performance. That would obviously be too slow to do over 4 days since I would get some recovery benefits in between runs. I settled on starting at a 13 minute pace for day 1 then picking up the pace 30 seconds per mile on subsequent days.
Over the years I’ve gotten pretty lackadaisical with my long runs, however I did everything within my power to be successful with these runs. I tapered down my volume a little in the days leading up to Friday. I fueled each run like I would during a race with 50 calories per mile. I drank as much as possible to rehydrate after each run. I minimized my steps outside the runs and skipped my afternoon walks. And I got 9-10 hours of sleep each night. Basically, if I thought it would help, I did it. Or didn’t do it as the case may be.
Day 1 – 13:00 target pace, 12:59 actual
I had a general idea of the route I wanted to run and the first day was focused on making sure I got to 25 miles and 3,000 feet of elevation gain. I did a couple hill repeats early on and that ended up being almost exactly what I needed so didn’t have to alter my planned course later on or do a silly amount of hill repeats just to hit my target. This was also the reason I picked 120 ft/mile instead of something closer to ES100’s 200 ft/mile. I’m sure there’s a form of training worse than doing 20 miles of hill repeats, but I have thankfully yet to discover it. I was walking all flat and uphill segments and the pacing was easy. It wasn’t quite as easy as I hoped though due to the temperatures and some doubts entered my mind about whether I could run the last day at a 11:30 pace. But that was still way in the future and tried to ignore those thoughts like I would during an ultra.
My normal summer long runs are looped routes where I can stop by my truck to swap out bottles. This route was a large loop so I was forced to carry 5.5 hours of fluids with me right from the start. All this extra weight (6-7 pounds with my food) took a bit of getting used to. I didn’t notice it so much on days 3 and 4, but the first was definitely a shock.
Day 2 – 12:30 target pace, 12:29 actual
This day didn’t feel any more difficult than the first day despite the quicker pace. There was more cloud cover so it felt a little cooler for the first part of the run. I was running pretty even splits from start to finish for each of the first two days. I would bank maybe a minute or two over the first half of the run, then give it back and a little more when I got to the hardest sections (miles 12-18), and then pull back to target over the last 7 miles which were the easiest.
Day 3 – 12:00 target pace, 11:59 actual
I definitely started to pick up the effort during this run. I decided to bank a couple extra minutes early on as I knew I couldn’t run the hardest sections any faster than I had been so was going to lose a decent amount of time considering my target pace was so much quicker. I ended the run strong and there were still lots of runnable sections that I had been walking so was cautiously optimistic I could hit my final target pace.
Day 4 – 11:30 target pace, 11:14 actual
This was max effort. I didn’t hold anything back with this run. I went out as hard as was comfortable and ran everything runnable right from the beginning. I hit mile 12 with an average pace of 10:24 and started to entertain thoughts of knocking a whole minute off my day 3 pace. My average pace slowly crept up to 11 minutes as I tackled the hardest sections. Then inched up some more even though the route started getting easier. And then flattened out as it got even easier. Monday ended up being probably the hottest day. Add in my effort early on and the 75 miles I ran the prior 3 days and I was just cooked. Very happy to be done.
Learnings / Takeaways / Final Thoughts
First off, I think I structured these runs correctly. I wanted to get quicker over each day to train myself to run more when I’m tired (I’m pretty good already at the opposite) and I accomplished that. My running time increase from 2:02 on day 1 to 2:06 on day 2 to 2:13 on day 3 to 2:52 the final day. Also, by starting easier I was able to recover back closer to my baseline than if I hammered the first day and then hung on for dear life on the others. My legs were a little tired to start out on days 2-4, however nothing like they were Tuesday. There’s a big difference between fighting to run a 13 minute pace because you want to go faster and fighting to run a 13 minute pace because that’s the hairy edge of your ability. One’s an enjoyable experience and the other. . . not so much.
My biggest takeaway is that I’m really dialed in to my endurance capabilities. While I’ve done a lot of hundreds now, I haven’t done back-to-back twenty milers since 2019 and I’ve never done it for three or more days in a row. I was able to translate my overall endurance to a completely new set of workouts and hit my overall time goal of 20.5 hours to within 6 minutes. Now I definitely could have run quicker on the first 3 days (maybe 20-30 minutes), however I would certainly have given some of that back on day 4. It’s about as close to calling my shot as I’ll ever get in this sport.
I probably should have lead with the disclaimer, but four big days of consecutive long runs is an advanced training strategy and should only be attempted by those with pretty massive running bases. And if you have to ask if your running base is large enough, it probably isn’t. You can scale this down to fit your situation as long as you err on the side of going slower rather than faster. This was an experiment for me and I’m glad I tried it. I’ll find out in 3.5 weeks whether it was beneficial or not.