Training Essentials For Ultrarunning- Second Edition

Copyright © 2021 by Koop Endurance Services, LLC

ISBN: 979-8-9850948-2-4 (e-book)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021924148

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Koop, Jason, author. | Rutberg, Jim. | Malcolm, Corrine.

Title: Training essentials for ultrarunning, Second edition / Jason Koop with Jim Rutberg and Corrine Malcolm

Description: Colorado Springs, CO, Koop Endurance Services, LLC [2021]

Subjects: LCSH: Marathon running—Training. | Ultra running.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Cover design by Abby Hall, cover photograph by Keith Ladzinski

Interior design by Abby Hall

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For David, the most selfless person I have ever known.

May we all follow in your footsteps.

See you on Hope Pass!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD BY KACI LICKTEIG

CHAPTER 1: THE ULTRARUNNING REVOLUTION

CHAPTER 2: THE PHYSIOLOGY OF A BETTER ENGINE

CHAPTER 3: THE ANATOMY OF ULTRAMARATHON PERFORMANCE

CHAPTER 4: FAILURE POINTS AND HOW TO FIX THEM

CHAPTER 5: THE FOUR DISCIPLINES OF ULTRARUNNING

CHAPTER 6: TRACKING TRAINING IN ULTRARUNNING

CHAPTER 7: ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS AND HOW TO ADAPT

CHAPTER 8: RECOVERY MODALITIES AND WHEN TO USE THEM

CHAPTER 9: TRAIN SMARTER, NOT MORE: KEY WORKOUTS

CHAPTER 10: ORGANIZING YOUR TRAINING: THE LONG-RANGE PLAN

CHAPTER 11: STRENGTH TRAINING FOR ULTRARUNNING

CHAPTER 12: ACTIVATING YOUR TRAINING: THE SHORT-RANGE PLAN

CHAPTER 13: FUELING AND HYDRATING FOR THE LONG HAUL

CHAPTER 14: ADAPTING SPORTS NUTRITION GUIDELINES FOR ULTRARUNNING EVENTS

CHAPTER 15: MENTAL SKILLS FOR ULTRARUNNING

CHAPTER 16: CREATING YOUR PERSONAL RACE STRATEGIES

CHAPTER 17: RACING WISELY

CHAPTER 18: COACHING GUIDE TO MAJOR ULTRAMARATHONS

REFERENCES

AUTHOR BIOS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

Foreword

BY KACI LICKTEIG

I want to win Western States.

Jason Koop was the first person I said that to. It might have been the first time I’d even said it out loud. It was the summer of 2014, and although I’d already achieved some success in two seasons as an ultrarunner, taking aim at the top step of the podium in the granddaddy of them all seemed like a giant leap. Putting it out there made it real, and having Jason in my corner made it feel possible. That’s what a coach does for you: they help expand your vision of what’s possible, not by telling you what you’re capable of but rather by guiding you to discover it within yourself.

My journey started in 2013, my first season running ultramarathons. I had transitioned from road marathons to trail running and experienced some success pretty quickly, but I could also tell that what I was doing wasn’t sustainable. I didn’t truly understand how to train for ultrarunning. Road marathons and trail ultras were very different, and I had a lot to learn.

When I won the 2013 Bear Chase 50 Mile outright, people started to take notice. I was introduced to Scott Jaime, who recommended that I contact a coach named Jason Koop. At the time, I had no idea who either of them was, so I didn’t act on the recommendation right away. As I continued to train on my own, however, I found myself wanting guidance and accountability, so I decided to reach out to Jason.

We had a great initial conversation. He asked me a ton of questions about my background, current and previous training, accomplishments, and goals. I similarly dug into his background and was reassured by his use of the latest scientific research, his coaching certifications, his personal experience as an athlete, and his rejection of cookie cutter training plans. What I truly loved was that he personally trains the same way he trains the athletes who work with him. He’s not a do as I say, not as I do coach. He does the workouts, runs the races, crews for runners, volunteers, and is active in the community.

I was excited to work with Jason, particularly because I had just earned a coveted spot into the 2014 Western States Endurance Run. As with any relationship, it took some time and patience for both of us to learn and adjust to each other. I was training at sea level, without a mountain in sight, for a 100-mile run featuring 18,000 feet of climbing, 23,000 feet of descending, and a peak elevation over 8,000 feet above sea level. I questioned plenty of things about his plan, and at every step he had solid science to back up what we were doing. Any remaining questions or doubts were put to rest on race day, when I ran around the Placer High School track to finish 6th in my first Western States.

It was shortly after that when I privately told Jason my ultimate goal and dream was to win Western States.

We went to work, and Jason was there through plenty of ups and downs. Two years later, on June 25, 2016, I achieved my dream. After 17 hours and 57 minutes, I ran around the track in Auburn, California, to win the Western States Endurance Run. I will never forget that moment, and I owe it to Jason for preparing me both physically and mentally for it. He will never take credit for his athletes’ accomplishments, but the performances speak volumes.

The Koop you’ll meet in this book is the same Koop I talk with on the phone. He’s a direct, brutally honest, no-nonsense scientist and coach who also has a tremendously compassionate, empathetic, and supportive side. He can be stern when it’s warranted, but he’s also the first person you want to see in an aid station when your day is going sideways, and he’ll be leading the cheering section when you cross the finish line. All of that passion, expertise, and perspective comes through in the pages of this book, which is why Training Essentials for Ultrarunning has helped so many new and experienced ultrarunners discover what they are truly capable of.

CHAPTER 1

The Ultrarunning Revolution

As this book finds its way into your eager hands, I will be well into my third decade of being a professional coach. During that time, I’ve worked with thousands of individual (and very different) athletes. I’ve helped guide marathon runners, cyclists, triathletes, ultrarunners, mixed martial arts fighters, motorsports athletes (NASCAR, motocross, and Formula One), various winter sports athletes, and a host of other athletes looking to develop their endurance. Some of those sports were familiar to me at the outset. As a lifelong runner, I had a background in the traditional distance events (5K, 10K, and marathon) and could readily adapt to other sports like cycling and triathlon. Running, cycling, and triathlon also had rich histories of peer-reviewed physiological research, as well as books like Daniels' Running Formula to draw upon. In working with any moderately fit marathoner, I could use a combination of my previous running experience, scientific literature, and other coaches’ guidance to comprehensively inform training. Thankfully, as a young coach I wound up in an environment that forced me outside sports I was familiar with, and that has made all the difference.

You learn the most when you are out of your comfort zone, and working with MMA fighters and NASCAR drivers was way out of my comfort zone. I didn’t know anything about those sports, which makes it pretty hard to improve athlete performance based on sheer experience. These sports also had relatively little scientific literature to draw upon and few points of reference to inform training. As a result, I was forced to learn about the sports from the ground up. In order to figure out how endurance training could be applied to sports not traditionally mentioned alongside marathon running, cycling, or triathlon, I developed a method of first meticulously learning about the sport before diving into the x’s and o’s of coaching. I would peel apart the physiological and psychological demands of the sport using a combination of old-school observation and best practices borrowed from similar sports.

When our coaching team started working with NASCAR drivers, we’d never been inside of a race car, never attended a race, and didn’t even knew the basic rule structure. So, our first order of business was to attend a routine practice alongside the engineers, pit crew, and the rest of the support system required to operate a NASCAR team. We rigged the drivers up with heart rate monitors and observed their breathing patterns over race radio to determine the cardiorespiratory stress during a race. It turns out that their heart and lungs are working as hard as any marathoner, so we designed training strategies for these athletes that leveraged proven training methods from other endurance disciplines. We had them train like marathoners and triathletes, complete with intervals, threshold runs, and long runs. We measured the temperatures in the car and inside the drivers’ specially designed suits and quickly determined that the conditions are similar to a summer day in Death Valley (which ironically would be another environment I became quite familiar with). As a result, we also had them perform heat stress protocols in the sauna, not too dissimilar to any athlete preparing for a hot-weather event like the Western States 100 or Badwater 135. And you thought all there was to NASCAR racing was to sit down and turn left.

The results provided proof that endurance training techniques can improve performance in sports outside the traditional endurance sports. Reducing the physical strain on the drivers though improved cardiovascular fitness and heat tolerance improved their driving. The drivers were able to better control their cars and communicate with their team because fewer of their physiological resources were dedicated to fighting the demands of the event. All of these interventions were developed through observation and borrowing protocols from other sports, a tactic that would serve me well as I entered into the realm of ultramarathon coaching.

As ironic as it might sound now, ultrarunners were actually very late to the table when it came to adopting and accepting coaching. And it was not from a lack of trying. In the early 2000s I spent frustrating amounts of time trying to convince elite ultrarunners that coaching would be a good thing for them. Ultrarunning is a complicated affair, so in my mind it seemed clear that some professional guidance would do the sport’s elite athletes some good. Alas, my pitches fell on deaf ears in those early years, and I got laughed out of more than several meetings.

Finally, in 2004 some of these athletes started to turn the corner and seek out professional coaching. Being that this was a new sport group to work with, I did what I always did with a new sport: I dug through copious amounts of research and looked for guidance. Except in this case, there was little to be found. The same year I started working with ultrarunners, there were exactly six research papers on the subject. No books on ultramarathon training existed. Any guidance I could find had to be mined from blogs, anecdotes, and the infamous ultra listserv (a message board for ultrarunners that the old-timers will remember fondly). So, absent any scientific guidance, just like with the NASCAR drivers, I went and observed. I went to races, paced athletes, spoke with those who were successful, and started running ultramarathons myself, all in an effort to understand the sport better. I also borrowed best practices from cycling, triathlon, and even cross-country skiing, because in many cases the demands from those sports overlap with ultrarunning.

Developing training strategies through observation and educated guessing works to an extent, particularly when it is all you have. And I have to say, the athletes I worked with in those early years did far better than anticipated. They thrived, won races around the globe, and achieved success that far outpaced their peers. People started to notice, so much so that a cottage industry for ultrarunning coaching sprouted and blossomed. As the sport grew and elite performances improved, the pace of research into what constitutes ultramarathon performance increased. All of this was good for athletes. Better information led to evolutions in coaching practices across the entire sport and more information for athletes to use on their own . . . but it was scattered. I wanted a way to consolidate it all. I wanted something that would present the training methodologies I had observed and curated side by side with emerging research. I wanted something that could synthesize best practices, the art of coaching, and emerging science to provide a comprehensive guide for ultramarathon athletes and their coaches. And for the first fifteen years I coached ultrarunners, this amalgamation failed to emerge.

The first edition of this book was written, in large part, to create the book I wanted as a coach and athlete. I sought to create a reference that would inspire, inform, and guide ultrarunners and coaches along their journeys. I wanted to create a book that I personally would have turned to when I first started working with ultrarunners, much like I used Daniels' Running Formula and The Lore of Running early in my coaching career. By any measuring stick, that effort was a success. Ultrarunners all along the spectrum of novices to elites finally had a book that blended science and practice. They had a manual to guide them, regardless of whether they were training for a 50K in the desert, 200 miles in the mountains, or any distance and terrain in between. Tens of thousands of copies of the first edition of this book have been sold. It’s been translated into multiple languages, and I’ve traveled around the world to give lectures on its contents. I’ve even had to recruit, screen, and train an entire ultrarunning coaching department (which at the time this book is published sits twelve coaches strong) to satiate the demand for athletes wanting to be coached.

Despite that success, the first edition of this book had some detractors. The training methods came under scrutiny, as they rightfully should, and at times by influential and well-known coaches. In 2016, just before the first edition of this book went to press, I was profiled by Trail Runner Magazine for a feature in their annual Dirt edition. The feature contained the normal Q&A-style interview, complete with a tour of my office and physiology lab, as well as interviews with many of the athletes I have worked with. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the author also gathered the opinions of trail running coaches David Roche, Ian Torrence, and Ian Sharman. Mr. Roche described some of the training strategies I use as chasing marginal gains, which is a contentious strategy that aims to compound many small incremental improvements to potentially create a larger meaningful benefit. Mr. Torrence and Mr. Sharman were critical of some of the strategic underpinnings I use for ultrarunners that are derived from different sports such as cycling.

Since the first edition of this book was published, some of those criticisms have echoed. I’ve been told you don’t believe in strength training, ultrarunners are not cross-country skiers, and the like. The fact of the matter is that most of these criticisms are ill-informed, shortsighted, poorly thought out, and lacking context. For example, anyone who has followed the hundreds of articles, interviews, and other pieces of content I have posted over my career knows that I preach a consistent theme of focusing on what matters most for improvement before chasing any marginal gains. Additionally, there are certain, limited circumstances where many marginal gains can mean the difference between an athlete winning and losing, or making a cutoff or not. Ultramarathon training is highly nuanced and rewards coaches and athletes who are open to new information and willing to accept that there may be multiple paths to a successful outcome.

The contents of this book exemplify this way of thinking. As you will come to find out, you can weigh the benefits you get from a sauna, strength training, or any other marginal intervention against one another and make choices on which gains to chase and which to forgo. Furthermore, while ultrarunning is a unique sport, it is not so dissimilar from cycling, cross-country skiing, triathlon, marathon running, or any other endurance sport that we can’t borrow and adapt research and best practices to better train ultramarathon runners. The fact of the matter is, there is far more information on training athletes in those traditional endurance sports than training ultrarunners, and there likely always will be. The key is finding the nuance in what can be applied across different endurance disciplines, what needs to be adapted from one sport to another, and what doesn’t apply at all.

Our understanding of ultramarathon running continues to evolve, and this book had to evolve as well. We know far more now about ultramarathon performance than we did at the time of the original publication. We’ve learned more about concepts like how neuromuscular fatigue likely plays an important role in ultramarathon performances, low-carbohydrate diets impact running economy, and hyponatremia (low blood sodium) is more often caused by overdrinking fluids that do not contain sodium than not consuming enough sodium. The six scientific papers published in 2004 have now expanded to more than one hundred per year, providing a growing trove of information coaches and athletes have the opportunity to digest and synthesize into their training.

With that as a backdrop, here’s what’s new in the second edition of Training Essentials for Ultrarunning: almost everything. In fact, more than 75 percent of the content has been revised, expanded, or written anew. Among other additions, there is a section devoted to low-carbohydrate diets, an entire chapter on the benefits (or lack thereof) of strength training, a chapter on mental skills for ultrarunning, and an in-depth section devoted specifically to considerations for female athletes. And to make sure I, as a male coach, wasn’t unconsciously biasing the recommendations for female athletes, as has often happened in various areas of research, I brought in my coaching colleague Corrine Malcolm to specifically pen that section. This book also went through greater scientific scrutiny from Nick Tiller, PhD, and Stephanie Howe, PhD, both ultrarunners who are well respected in their fields. This expands upon the scientific guidance provided by preeminent biomechanist Rodger Kram, PhD, and former Western States medical director Martin Hoffman, MD, in the first edition of this book. There are nearly 400 references to scientific literature, all of which can be found in the book’s references section.

Despite the additions, you still will not find a stock training plan in this book. If you are expecting to see a page you can tear out, put on your refrigerator, and blindly follow for the next twenty weeks, you are going to be sorely disappointed. So, don’t say I didn’t warn you, and please ask for your money back now before you leave a one-star Amazon review. Better yet, read the book, and at the end, if you hate it, email me and I will gladly refund you, no questions asked.

This book will walk you through the steps of solving your personal puzzle of ultramarathon performance. It will take you on a journey, step by step, on how ultramarathons work, what you can do to better prepare for them, and how you can thrive during the process. At the end of that journey, I want you to come away well informed and confident about whatever ultramarathon adventure you have chosen. I want you to understand what it takes to make yourself a better ultrarunner. I want you to have enough information and wisdom to create and adjust your own training, nutrition, and ultramarathon game plan, and to be confident with the process. I want you to dog-ear the pages in this book that have particular meaning to you and scribble notes in the margins. Above all else, I want you to be inspired by the training processes you uncover and the realization that you are ready to crush your most audacious goals. After all, ultrarunning is a ridiculously difficult sport, one that is rife with pitfalls and hazards that confound even the most seasoned athletes. Preparation is your greatest ally and most powerful resource, and the information in this book will help you be as prepared as possible when you step up to the start line.

Finally, I would be remiss not to mention that this book does not have any sponsors, endorsers, or other sources of financial or business entanglement. In 2018, I made the conscious decision to alleviate myself from any such conflicts of interest, real or perceived, and I have to say that the move was quite liberating. In today’s world of paid partnerships, Instagram influencers, and implied endorsements, it is nearly impossible for the end consumer to ascertain fact from fiction. While there are many athletes and influencers that authentically use and endorse the products they are peddling, there are just as many that wear a different brand of shoes on their feet, have a different drink in their bottle, or are just taking the endorsement money and running. So, I decided to avoid these conflicts altogether and turned down every endorsement opportunity that has come my way since (much to the dismay of my bank account). As a consequence, if I recommend something it is because I believe in the product or method based on its merits, not because someone is paying me to do so. This freedom also allows me to opine on products and practices that are, quite frankly, junk and pseudoscientific garbage. And I certainly don’t mind calling them out as such.

To take it a step further, I acquired the rights to self-publish this book in order to make it as long, detailed, and accurate as possible. (Plus I wanted to say whatever I pleased, which is problematic with even the most liberal of publishers.) Make no mistake, these actions cost me a copious amount of time and a fair amount of money. I hired and paid editors, contributors, printers, and the like out of my own pocket in order to get this edition of the book off of the ground. But the trade-off is worth it, and I wouldn’t change a thing. In my profession, I am ultimately a purveyor of advice. Athletes trust in the words I write and say. Based on that trust, they take action from those words. I honor that trust as a sacred bond between me and the athletes reading these pages. So, rest assured the content that follows contains the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in a pure, raw, unentangled, and unadulterated fashion all the way down to the last sentence.

So, if you are ready, willing, and able, let’s get right into it!

CHAPTER 2

The Physiology of a Better Engine

The human body is an incredible machine. You take in food, an all-encompassing term that covers everything from fresh berries to a Big Mac, and within minutes convert it (or at least some of it) into usable energy. When it comes to accessing that energy, you are able to go from the sedentary state of reading this book to sprinting, if necessary, at a moment’s notice. And as you run longer or change your pace, your body seamlessly adjusts how it produces energy based on how quickly you are demanding it and the energy sources available.

To do this, the human body has three primary energy systems that produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is the energy currency the body uses to power all activities. The quickest source is the immediate energy system of stored ATP and creatine phosphate (ATP-PCr), followed by the glycolytic (anaerobic) system and the aerobic system. All three energy systems produce ATP, which releases energy when one of its three phosphate bonds is broken. The resulting adenosine diphosphate (ADP) is then resynthesized to ATP so it can be broken down again, and again, and again. All three energy systems are always working together synergistically in varying amounts (Figure 2.1); there is no on/off switch, and at any given time the amount of energy produced by each system is based on demand. These three energy systems are fundamental to endurance training, and although you don’t need a physiology degree to be a good ultrarunner, it is nonetheless helpful to understand the systems you’re training.

The Immediate Energy System: ATP-PCr

The ATP-PCr system supports high-power efforts that last less than eight to ten seconds. You use it when you have to jump out of the way of a speeding bus, and from an athletic standpoint it’s most important in power sports like sprinting, mixed martial arts, or powerlifting. In endurance running this system is used mostly for explosive movements like jumping across a creek or bounding up a series of boulders. During those few seconds, you demand energy faster than either the glycolytic or aerobic energy system can deliver it. The ATP-PCr system yields immediate energy because ATP, the energy-yielding molecule, is stored directly in the muscle. This very limited supply that is stored in your muscles is available for immediate use because it doesn’t require the multiple steps that the anaerobic and aerobic systems require to produce ATP. Endurance athletes don’t rely heavily on this system, and it is typically adequately developed through normal training.

The Lactic Acid System

The lactic acid system is the high-speed express lane for delivering energy quickly in times of heightened demand. This is the system people often refer to as anaerobic, which literally means without oxygen. This terminology causes confusion because it implies that the body has stopped using oxygen to produce energy, which is not the case. As exercise intensity increases, there comes a point at which the demand for energy outstrips the aerobic system’s ability to produce ATP in working muscles. Then comes a hill. Or you spot a fellow racer and pick up the pace. The demand for energy increases further, and in order to meet the demand, the mitochondria’s aerobic functions are supported by energy derived from anaerobic processes. Although the actual process involves many steps, to put it simply, where aerobic metabolism delivers all of the energy available from a molecule of glucose (sugar), glycolysis converts glucose into lactate through a process that delivers some of the energy available in glucose, but more quickly.

Lactate is a normal by-product in the breakdown of carbohydrate (glucose) to ATP during glycolysis. As lactate is produced via glycolysis, 75 percent of it enters the bloodstream and is shuttled to the mitochondria, where it can be utilized as a substrate for energy production (Brooks 1986). The remaining 25 percent is sent to the liver to be repurposed into glucose via a process called gluconeogenesis, literally creating new glucose. Lactate has been misunderstood for years. It has been blamed for the burning sensation in your muscles when you surge above your sustainable pace. It has been blamed for delayed-onset muscle soreness. People have tried to massage it away, flush it out, and buffer it in (largely failed) attempts to enhance or prolong exercise. We now understand that increases in lactate are not the cause of fatigue, they merely coincide with it, and the best way to utilize lactate is to reintegrate it back into normal aerobic metabolism to complete the process of breaking it down into energy, water, and carbon dioxide.

Under normal conditions, when aerobic energy supply meets energy demand, lactate clearance from the blood occurs at a rate faster than it accumulates. Once lactate production outstrips the body’s ability to buffer it, lactate begins to accumulate in the blood. This is referred to as the lactate threshold and indicates a change in the way energy is being derived from predominantly aerobic means to now include a greater contribution from anaerobic sources. In short, this threshold is the intensity at which an athlete can sustain his effort for an extended period of time. By increasing the intensity or pace at which this occurs, an athlete is able to improve performance. Thus, this is one of the primary outcomes of endurance training. This training adaptation also enables you to recover from hard efforts more quickly, because deriving energy from glycolysis is like buying energy on credit. You’re getting the currency you need as you need it, but you don’t have unlimited credit, and sooner rather than later you’re going to have to pay back every cent you borrowed. What’s more, you have to cut back on spending while you’re paying it back, which means you have to slow down.

As an endurance athlete, one of the key adaptations is an improvement in the ability to integrate lactate into aerobic energy production so it can be oxidized completely. The faster you can process lactate, the more work you can perform before fatigue-inducing anaerobic metabolites (not lactate) accumulate in the muscle and blood. Or, in the financial analogy, a stronger aerobic system puts more cash (aerobic metabolism) in your pocket so you’re not so quick to use credit.

The Aerobic System

The aerobic system is remarkable. It produces the majority of the energy we use for daily life and exercise; can burn carbohydrate, fat, and protein simultaneously; and can regulate the mixture it burns based on fuel availability and energy demand. It can even burn protein, although that’s not used as a significant source of energy unless you have very low energy reserves. The aerobic system is a flex-fuel engine that’s clean and efficient; when the aerobic system is done with a molecule of carbohydrate, the only waste products are water and carbon dioxide. In comparison, the lactic acid system discussed earlier produces energy faster but can only utilize carbohydrate, produces less ATP from every molecule it processes, and produces metabolites that lower body pH and interfere with muscle contractions.

For an endurance athlete, increasing the amount of oxygen the body can transport and utilize is one of the primary goals of training, because oxygen is the limiting factor in how quickly you can produce energy aerobically. On the transportation side, your body’s amount of hemoglobin, which is a component of your blood, largely dictates how much oxygen you can take from your lungs and deliver to working muscles. Once oxygen has been transported to the muscles, it is then utilized by the mitochondria during the process of energy conversion. The mitochondria are a muscle cell’s power plants. They harness the oxygen and fuel (carbohydrate and fat) and convert those substrates into useable energy. Training improves both the transportation and utilization sides of the equation.

VO2 Max

When the body is delivering and utilizing as much oxygen as it possibly can and exercise intensity reaches its absolute peak, you’re at VO2 max. VO2 max, or maximum aerobic capacity, is measured in liters of oxygen per minute taken up and utilized by the muscles. Since VO2 max varies by body size and muscle mass, the measurement unit mL/kg/min is used to compare across different athletes because it takes body weight into account.

VO2 max is one of the indicators (but not the only indicator) of your potential as an endurance athlete. And while a higher VO2 max is generally a good thing for any individual athlete, an exceedingly high VO2 max doesn’t automatically guarantee you’ll become a champion. All it means is you have a big engine. You need a big engine to be an elite athlete, but no matter what size engine you start with, you can optimize your performance with effective training.

It takes a great effort to reach intensities near VO2 max, and VO2 max-specific workouts generate an enormous amount of lactate and burn energy tremendously fast. But the reward is worth the effort, because increasing your pace at VO2 max (the pace you can run while utilizing the maximum amount of oxygen possible) and your absolute VO2 max (how many liters of oxygen you can utilize per minute) give you the physiological underpinnings to run faster at any distance. Ultramarathon athletes sometimes suffer from a one-pace mentality. When your goal is to keep moving for fifteen to thirty hours, it seems to make the most sense to primarily use endurance and some lactate threshold workouts to get to the fitness level necessary to sustain that effort. It’s the sustainable aspect that keeps too many athletes from venturing into more intense efforts. The perception is that the sport is all about making steady forward progress and that one only needs longer long runs to ensure success. While volume is important, intensities at and near your VO2 max are also critical for building your engine.

The Endurance String Theory

Delineating the various ways your body can produce energy is both a blessing and a curse. On the positive side, knowing how each system works gives us the information necessary to design training that maximizes the specific physiological adaptations we desire. On the downside, the same information has inadvertently led people to believe that these systems operate independently of each other. Sports scientists, coaches, and even the folks who made your heart rate monitor have told you that training in zone something-or-other will target your lactic acid system and increase your pace at lactate threshold. And although that is true, the lactic acid system isn’t the only one doing the work at that intensity, nor is it the only one that will reap a training benefit.

Energy production is always coming through all possible pathways, but your demand for energy determines the relative contribution from each. At low to moderate intensities, such as 40 to 50 percent of VO2 max or an easy endurance run, the vast majority of your energy comes from the aerobic system (mitochondria breaking down primarily fat and some carbohydrate). As the intensity level increases, a greater amount of energy is derived anaerobically. Energy contribution from glycolysis ramps up even further as you approach intensities near and above your lactate threshold, which can be anywhere from 65 to 85 percent of VO2 max for a particular athlete. Because glycolysis uses only glucose, the overall percentage of energy coming from carbohydrate rises dramatically as intensity increases from lactate threshold to VO2 max. The body is still using fat, but at a lower rate because the breakdown of fat into energy is much slower.

Rather than seeing your various energy pathways as separate and distinct, it’s better to think of them as segments of one continuous string, arranged based on the relative contributions of energy derived from each as the duration of an all-out task increases. At one end of the spectrum, for very short efforts lasting eight to ten seconds, is a small segment represented by energy contributions primarily from the ATP-PCr system. After that is the lactic acid system, which can provide a lot of energy at full gas for efforts lasting less than about two minutes. Finally, as duration increases further, there is a large segment representing the aerobic system, which theoretically could power your muscles at a moderate intensity level forever if it had sufficient oxygen and fuel. Improving fitness in one system is like lifting the string in that region—all other areas of the string rise, too. The extents of these ancillary improvements vary based on the system you initially targeted. For instance, targeting VO2 max has a greater lifting effect on lactate-threshold fitness and aerobic endurance than training at aerobic intensities has on lifting lactate threshold or VO2 max. Ultimately, all of the systems are interconnected, and even the most narrowly focused training will have upstream and downstream effects on your physiology.

FIGURE 2.1 The contributions of the three energy systems (ATP-PCr, glycolysis, and aerobic) to energy production over time (seconds) during an all-out effort. Adapted from Gastin 2001.

WHAT ABOUT AEROBIC DEFICIENCY SYNDROME?

THE TERM AEROBIC DEFICIENCY SYNDROME (ADS) was coined by Phil Maffetone as a deleterious condition whereby your aerobic system is deficient (Maffetone 2015). He has described it as a devastating condition for athletes that affects millions of people. The result of this syndrome, according to Maffetone, is reduced endurance, quickened fatigue, loss of aerobic speed, and a variety of chronic conditions. Sound pretty terrible? Yeah, I’d be afraid of it, too.

This apparent syndrome has also been regurgitated among writers, bloggers, coaches, athletes, and anyone else that can’t think for themselves as a justification for avoiding high-intensity intervals and only performing very low-intensity exercise.

Let’s examine these claims.

First, as of this book’s publishing, the term aerobic deficiency syndrome appears nowhere in any scientific literature. It’s not in any textbook or scientific journal article. Contrast that with overtraining syndrome (oftentimes referred to as underperformance syndrome), which has been extensively described in scientific literature and has a robust consensus among athletes, coaches, and sports scientists.

Furthermore, as the name implies, people suffering from ADS apparently have a deficient aerobic system stemming from too much high-intensity work. The fact of the matter is, after you get past just a minute or two of an all-out effort, nearly 100 percent of the energy contributions will come from an aerobic pathway (see Figure 2.1). Thus, for any endurance athlete, even if you are doing high-intensity interval work, you are still deriving almost all of that energy aerobically. So, the notion that your aerobic system is deficient is complete and total nonsense. Aerobic deficiency syndrome is just a fictitious combination of words, is not described anywhere in any scientific literature, and does not accurately describe anything in endurance training.

Bottom line, this is just a made-up term. Don’t be fearmongered into not doing high-intensity work because of a fake syndrome.

Fundamental Principles of Training

No two athletes are exactly the same, but we all use the same mechanisms to produce energy. Similarly, no two athletes adapt to training the exact same way, but effective training is based on a common set of principles. When you distill the world’s most successful training programs across all sports, you arrive at five distinct principles of training:

1. OVERLOAD AND RECOVERY

2. PROGRESSION

3. INDIVIDUALITY

4. SPECIFICITY

5. SYSTEMATIC APPROACH

OVERLOAD AND RECOVERY

Fundamentally, training is designed to leverage the body’s normal response to stress (or overload). The human body is designed to respond to overload, and as long as you properly overload a system and allow time for recovery, that system will adapt and be ready for the same or greater stress in the future. To achieve positive training effects, this principle must be applied both to individual training sessions and to entire periods of your training. For instance, an interval workout around your lactate threshold must be intense enough and long enough so that the total stimulus is great enough to make your body say, OK, I got it. I need to be bigger, stronger, and faster than I am right now so that the next time this happens, I am more equipped for the task.

Proper overload and subsequent recovery are incredibly important for ultrarunners. Most ultrarunners will come into the sport with some running background. The significance of this is that they have previously gone through the early stages of development where improvement and PRs seemingly happen every week. Runners with more than four years of experience (most ultrarunners fit into this category) will know that as you gain experience, improvement is harder and harder to come by. Striving for those gains means finding ways to increase overload, often within limited training time, while also scheduling adequate recovery. As a result, training and workout architecture will matter more for an experienced athlete than for a novice athlete who can improve simply by not screwing it up. The various workouts, short-range plan, and long-range plan described later in this book are designed so that you can realize an appropriate amount of overload and then combine that with appropriate recovery in order to continue to see improvement regardless of your experience level.

Many novice athletes start out with haphazard or scattered training, but they nevertheless make steady gains because they are beginners. Just the act of training leads to significant improvement when you’re starting out. But that progress stalls relatively quickly because you reach the point where the stimulus applied with each individual workout is not high enough or consistent enough to lead to further adaptation. Focusing your training on one area for a number of weeks, as you can do with a block of lactate threshold training, concentrates workload and training time to create a stimulus large enough to improve performance in that area. This becomes even more important for ultra-endurance athletes, because you are already adapted to a high overall workload. To make progress in any one aspect of fitness, you not only need to focus on it but also need to reduce focus on other areas during the same period. For example, when working on VO2 max it’s important to reduce overall volume to adequately recover between sessions and maintain the quality of each workout.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s recovery. Recovery, which is covered in depth in Chapter 8, is not merely the absence of workouts but rather a crucial component of training. Days off should not be viewed as missed opportunities to get in another run. In reality, the periods between your workouts are when the really important adaptations such as plasma volume expansion, mitochondrial biogenesis, and red blood cell volume increases happen in your body. When you’re in the middle of a training run, you’re not improving your fitness; you’re just applying stress and accumulating fatigue. But when you kick up your feet, sleep, hydrate, and provide your body with adequate and proper nutrition, that’s when your fitness improves. It’s not possible to train hard and gain fitness without proper rest and recovery. So, the next time your Type A buddy who’s trained every day of the past four years chastises you for sitting on the couch or going for a walk with the dog instead of a sixty-minute run, just smile and tell her you’re busy adapting.

HOW LONG SHOULD INTERVALS BE?

POP QUIZ: EACH OF THE INTERVAL SETS BELOW features the exact same duration of work, but only one is the most effective for improving VO2 max. Which one?

A. 12 x 1 minute at maximum intensity with 1 minute recovery between intervals

B. 4 x 3 minutes at maximum intensity with 3 minutes recovery between intervals

C. 2 x 6 minutes at maximum intensity with 6 minutes recovery between intervals

Intervals that work are long enough to stress the desired physiology and separated by recovery periods that let an athlete repeat the effort. Intervals that don’t work are either too short or too long and separated by recovery periods that are too short or too long. They might be hard but don’t have a focus in a way that is productive. You get tired but ultimately not stronger or faster.

The point of intervals is to maximize the body’s exposure to intensity over time. For intervals where the primary purpose is to improve VO2 max , they need to be long enough to achieve and sustain an effort above 90 percent of your VO2 max (as measured by oxygen consumption), which takes anywhere from sixty to ninety seconds. The figure below is from a study that examined the physiological response to one-, two-, four-, and six-minute intervals with 1:1 work-rest ratios. Though each combination represents twenty-four minutes of interval work, you can see the differences in cardiovascular response as the intervals get longer. They found that athletes achieve their highest oxygen consumption during the four-minute intervals. In practice, intervals between two and four minutes are long enough for an athlete to ramp up to VO2 max intensity and maintain it for the duration of the interval. When athletes pace themselves through six-minute intervals, they don’t reach as high an intensity.

OPTIMAL WORK-REST RATIOS

The interval duration is one thing to get right; the work-rest ratio is another. For intervals targeting VO2 max improvement, two to four minutes at a 1:1 work-rest ratio works best, as it maximizes recovery from the previous interval without extending the overall workout duration and thus compromising the intensity you can achieve duringthe rest of the interval set. As intervals get longer and the intensity drops, athletes don’t need as much recovery relative to the interval length before they are ready to repeat the effort. That’s why the work-rest ratio for intervals at lactate threshold (TempoRun) is 2:1 and grows even greater for high-end aerobic intervals (SteadyStateRun). (TempoRuns and SteadyStateRuns will be further defined in Chapter 9.)

Getting back to the original question on the most effective VO2 max workout, the answer is B (4 x 3 minutes). The intervals in A are too short to reach VO2 max and stay there long enough to be effective. The intervals in C are so long most athletes would pace themselves at too low an intensity to optimally train VO2 max.

FIGURE 2.2 Mean heart rate responses during (A) 1-minute, (B) 2-minute, (C) 4-minute, and (D) 6-minute intervals. Adapted from Seiler and Sjusren 2004.

PROGRESSION

Training must progressively move forward for continued gains in performance to occur. Time and intensity are the two most significant variables you can use to increase your workload. For instance, you can increase the number of hours you devote to training (which is training volume) or increase the overall intensity of your workouts. You can use time and intensity to manipulate training in a near limitless combination. No matter what you choose, the end result must generate a training stimulus great enough to elicit adaptions from your heart, muscles, blood vessels, bones, gut, connective tissue— basically everything. These are not static adaptations, however. Once you adapt and grow stronger, you have to again manipulate the time and intensity variables to further increase workload and generate another training stimulus. In other words, it will take a bigger workload to overload a stronger system.

The timeline for progression can take several forms. Many novice marathon training programs will use a weekly progression structure, meaning the volume (the amount of time or miles you do) and volume of intensity (the amount of time spent doing hard efforts) increase every week with periodic recovery weeks. Practically speaking, these runners would do a thirty-minute Tempo workout one week, a forty-minute Tempo the next week, and a forty-five-minute Tempo the week after that assuming that some sort of positive adaptation takes place in those intervening weeks that enables the athlete to handle higher and higher workloads.

This type of architecture, while fine for many athletes, has a few glaring flaws upon further examination. First, for most cardiovascular- and endurance-related adaptations, the time course of said adaptations takes weeks, not days, to complete. That being said, there are very few things going on physiologically that would result in any meaningful improvement between weeks one, two, and three. Second, the hardest Tempo workouts (forty-five minutes) would be happening during the week of the most cumulative fatigue, presenting a potential worst of both worlds scenario (highest level of fatigue coupled