Time Crunch Athlete
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Hello,
Wondering if anyone can provide some insight as it relates to my training directly. I’m training for a 50 miler in April that will be very steep. I am time restricted to maybe 6-8 hours a week most weeks. During the week I primarily run on roads or flat dirt but have vert available on the weekends. Should I still be sticking to one dedicated speed day and some “quality” miles in my long run or should I focus more on intensity as I’m time restricted?
Anything I can do to maximize my training would be appreciated as I know most of it is lower volume. Currently I do a speed day on Wednesday and 25-45 min at tempo in my long run and the rest easy or easy with strides at the end. Should I structure my different?
Great question and one that we hear often. Your comment about the steepness of this 50-mile race leads me to assume that there is also a lot of overall vertical gain and loss. If that is the case and you are crunched on time during the week, I would ditch the speed work day and substitute steep vert.
Train for the demands of the event (DOE)…….
If my assumption about the amount of vert in the race is correct, speed will not be an issue. What will be, though, is the ability to go up and down steep terrain. You will need to build fatigue resistance in the main propelling muscles. That means muscular endurance training. Since you have a long runway to build this, I suggest starting with a 10-16 week block of our gym ME program. Then shifting to weighted Stairmaster ME work. This strategy has worked well for many mountain runners we have trained for races with a lot of vert. We’ve seen this work very well for people with restricted time for training. The year Luke Nelson was 9th at Tor d’Geant (205 miles with about 80k vert), his average weekly mileage for the six months leading into the race was 48 miles/week. But he did a ton of ME work, and it paid off well, keeping his legs strong the whole time. You might want to read this post on ME.
You will probably be spending a lot of time walking. Tom Evans spent about 50% of the UTMB walking the year he was 3rd. You need to train for walking by walking a lot and fast uphill. If you will use poles, you should be doing most of your training with poles.
I hope this helps. Good luck with your training.
Scott
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