Long-Term Ultra Planning

0-1M Today, did 6.5km in a very casual 32:04. Pace Was a bit choppy because of some intersections, ran on a grass square that's about 700m. The border of a local park is uninterrupted, has some trees for skills work, and is generally quiet and peaceful. There's this guy that has walked his dog off-leash around me in the park a few times, and when his dog comes within a meter of me I warn him that his dog could get kicked. It's this little fluffy and pointless thing, no more than 30 pounds, likely around 20. I was high for the run, only a bit. I have a vaporizer that I took about 12 hits off of over the course of 4 minutes about 30 minutes prior to the run. Also fueled with Skratch Strawberry Lemonade around the same time. I ran without music today, which has not been normal for me lately. I will try to continue going without music in the future, more on this after the log entry. The route there is a bit hilly, and I admittedly took longer than I would like to get into it. Weather wasn't that bad, 24 and a little rainy. Super humid, maybe 70%. Cadence was clearly unpracticed, but I was able to slalom the trees a few times and not twist my ankle. I raced a yellow on the way home just before 5k, and I absolutely did more than I should have. Today's purpose was easy mileage, I should've respected that and will try to do better in the future. I did strength work after. Five rounds of ten reps each: Push-Ups, Sit-Ups, and Raised-Heel Goblet Squats with the 20# kettlebell. The goblet Squats bring some added interest and motor complexity to the training session. I had a burrito following , and will do yoga later prior to going to sleep.

DATA:

Splits: 4:52/5:12/4:51/5:01/4:34/4:55/2:36

Gain: 31m Cadence: 161 Average, 238 Max HR: 166avg/196hi

Some notes continuing the discussion previously:

Part of ultramarathon training, in my opinion and experience, is doing hard things just to steel the body and mind as a singular organism to do a hard-er thing. I don't use the word hard lightly here. Quite obviously, my stated goal of running two 50 milers in two days (targeting July of next year, plus a month for each injury between now and then) is a hard-er thing. It'll be harder than running just one 50 miler, and significantly so. The training is built to normalize into that hardness.

In Blocks 3&4 I have chosen to begin adding quality, as the proportional increase in mileage week-over-week decreases. Barring one exceptional week in block 4, there are three easy days and one recovery day each week. The recovery day will remain the same as blocks 1 & 2, that being 5-7km twice on Sundays. The easy days will range from 12km-20km, averaging 13.8km/day. Tuesdays will be the altered day from the first two blocks, as the end of what was formerly easy mileage will now become tempo mileage. Borrowing from our distant classical-sports Bulgarian cousins in weightlifting, I had an epiphany many moons ago (backed by some gatherings from Wilt, Magness, and co) - by increasing the saturation of high-RPE efforts in a training cycle, the more rapidly a person could acquire competition-level fitness. The anecdote that a lot of us realize (and that I've linked to data) is that the guys who train harder are ready to race faster and on a more regular basis. Every tuesday of block 3 is a 10km easy run, and then 4km of tempo. A very simple, very taxing workout. By "tempo" I'm referring not to a range of relative paces or a specific heart rate zone. Hard efforts should be determined by RPE and measured by the watch. We allow our lives to be dictated algorithmically far too often, and as such we contrive and command our bodies to fit expectations that they are not designed for. Tempo runs, in the past, have been from 3:20/km pace all the way up to 4:03 pace, and everything in between. For a late-20's male with experience running, those numbers are usually appropriate. It has been a long time since I have run hard, and while I am certainly weaning off of THC, I don't think I can yet know the damage that's been done to my lungs. In short, we'll see. Fridays will still be speed work, likely at this point shifting to hill sprints. There are a few short (2-300m) and steep (7-14% grade) hills nearby that will serve as great anaerobic activators during these sessions. Long rest, short work. The other option would be to break up the workout into something like this, from Toshihiko Seko in the afternoon of 12 May 1977 (thank you Mr. Hodge): 2 x 1000m + 3 x 400m + 4 x 200m + 5 x 100m + 10 x 50m. Stuff like this is right up my alley. Especially because simply adding 3x2km of easy/tempo/threshold (respectively) would take me - with warmups - to the 14km/day distance number that I'm looking for in block 3. In Block 4, The tempo work is placed at the end of longer easy runs (12km) in weeks A, C, and E. Week B is designed to help tailor the training block towards aerobic recruitment, and as such I've replaced Tuesday's threshold work with a longer easy run. Week D has the longest long run until block 6, so I've also removed the tempo work in favor of a lighter Tuesday. The long runs in block 3 are as follows: 28/30/30/35/30. In Block 4: 30/32/40/45/30. In blocks 3 and 4 there are no specific or advanced long runs, they are all simply mileage. That covers all seven days of the week for each of the five weeks in blocks 3 and 4.

I certainly hear the detractors now: "aren't you worried of pulling the bread out of the oven too early?" "What about long-term training overload and burnout?" Bruce Denton theorized with someone I'm a big personal fan of that you could just break through the breakdown that winter running brings. 20 weeks from today, it'll be February. Regardless of how chaotic my life may be right now, all options I have afforded to me place me in states that border Canada. Training specifically and hard this winter is going to be difficult. This is why I think doing the total work outside is necessary. Backing away from the challenge, leaning on crutches - they're all merely contrivances diluting what I desire to be the truest test of my physical life and body. I want it to be difficult because it's supposed to be difficult.

I am also pretty sure that this is the hardest thing that I am capable of doing, so why not see if I can follow through on it? Not necessarily for clout, rather to see if I can answer the question of whether or not I can do the darn thing. The question every person at some point asks - why am I - is never answered absolutely or singularly. It's a question with many answers that are ultimately unique and subjective to the individual trying to answer it. I, like many others who enlisted, have friends who aren't here. I have people who I didn't serve with that I've lost. Names that I carry with me. People who altered the trajectory of my life just by interacting with them. I think part of our duty to those people who lift us up, people who help us self-identify and actualize within existence - is to live well within their memory. While balance and healthy living is important, I think the question is partially answered by the way that we carry those names. The way that we illustrate that answer to others and the way that we communicate our observations about that answer to others are also both key because of the bear-in-the-woods problem. If I reach a satisfactory-enough answer about what the ultimate purpose of my life has been, and I don't communicate that to another person - am I actually capable of actualizing it? Moreover, the least-contrived physical test on the planet is - in my personal case - a core element of that answer. I want to know what the limits of the human spirit are. I want to know the goalpost I haven't hit yet. I have 113 races under my belt and a single DNF from a 10k where I gave up. I hope the version of me racing then is a lesser man than the one writing this now, but such remains to be seen.

I will write the in-depth explanation of blocks 5 and 6 at a later date, and will likely continue the daily updates in the interim.

You are over complicating things.

Sign up for your ultra of your choice. Do a weekly mileage between 30-80mpw (your choice if you can run that much) , do some longer runs and do some specific training for that race you signed up for. Taper a week or two and then just race it and see what happens.

After that you learn from your experience and you improve your process.

After 30+ years of ultrarunning I still would not know what "more ultra specific stuff" is. It's all running.

You’re an interesting fellow. I’m looking forward to the updates. I need to stimulate my brain with reading more anyway

I've done this before, as stated, and know what I'm doing. I have longer-term goals in mind beyond this specific 39 week time period, and need to successfully complete this training in order to reasonably set my sights on those larger goals.

Because of my previous failures to accomplish these goals through a more lackadaisical approach (not unlike what you suggest), I am applying a more critical and analytical approach to my training. I feel that the application of science and discipline will help me move past the previous roadblocks to actual fitness and stamina within the ultra distances.

Doing what you're describing will put me in the middle of the pack. I won the last ultra that I ran. I want to keep doing that.

Respect to you, man, 3+ decades doing anything is impressive - it's longer than I've been alive for sure. There's also a reason why times get faster, why people hang up their spikes, and why records will always be broken. Science's informational momentum carries increasing performance trends through typically younger adopters of new training methodology. You're certainly entitled to your armchair expertise and ultimately aged opinion.

landon wrote:

You’re an interesting fellow. I’m looking forward to the updates. I need to stimulate my brain with reading more anyway

I appreciate the interest. Most of these early weeks will be pretty boring and informational stuff. I don't think training will likely get that neat until the second or third week of November, but this is the way of things. I'll start adding a TL;DR at the top, as well. I've received previous complaints about being overly verbose.

ecoAnPac wrote:

Because of my previous failures to accomplish these goals through a more lackadaisical approach (not unlike what you suggest), I am applying a more critical and analytical approach to my training. I feel that the application of science and discipline will help me move past the previous roadblocks to actual fitness and stamina within the ultra distances.

You are such a bulls!tter.

Looks like I can run longer than I want to read wrote:

ecoAnPac wrote:

Because of my previous failures to accomplish these goals through a more lackadaisical approach (not unlike what you suggest), I am applying a more critical and analytical approach to my training. I feel that the application of science and discipline will help me move past the previous roadblocks to actual fitness and stamina within the ultra distances.

You are such a bulls!tter.

Only one way to find out old man

Holy sh*t this is why I hate runners, and ESPECIALLY ultra”runners”. You literally wrote an essay about your training plan for a hike in the woods. If you think this hard about running, which is literally the simple act of putting your left foot in front of your right foot, and then repeating for as fast/long as you can, I can’t even imagine how you deal with things in life that are 1000000x more complicated than that. Your brain probably just overloads and freezes up when dealing with any kind of real situations in life that are more important than planning how to train for a hike that no one cares about.

Lay off the drugs.

get off the drugs wrote:

Holy sh*t this is why I hate runners, and ESPECIALLY ultra”runners”. You literally wrote an essay about your training plan for a hike in the woods. If you think this hard about running, which is literally the simple act of putting your left foot in front of your right foot, and then repeating for as fast/long as you can, I can’t even imagine how you deal with things in life that are 1000000x more complicated than that. Your brain probably just overloads and freezes up when dealing with any kind of real situations in life that are more important than planning how to train for a hike that no one cares about.

Lay off the drugs.

This guy is not an ultrarunner at all.

Too many drugs created too many needless words.

get off the drugs wrote:

Holy sh*t this is why I hate runners, and ESPECIALLY ultra”runners”. You literally wrote an essay about your training plan for a hike in the woods. If you think this hard about running, which is literally the simple act of putting your left foot in front of your right foot, and then repeating for as fast/long as you can, I can’t even imagine how you deal with things in life that are 1000000x more complicated than that. Your brain probably just overloads and freezes up when dealing with any kind of real situations in life that are more important than planning how to train for a hike that no one cares about.

Lay off the drugs.

Dude this is literally the training discussion forum, so I assumed if I wanted to talk about something like this more in-depth, at bare minimum my stupidity would be material to the discussion. I like to put this much thought into running because my two jobs are essentially thoughtless. I have a cat, and I play dungeons and dragons with my friends. Running is what I like to sink the majority of my mental energy into because I do think that training can be perfected.

I'm doing the methodological version of either - and feel free to flip a coin for yourself - sh*tposting or pointing in the baseball stands before hitting a home run. Either it works out or it doesn't, and I'll definitely eat s**t if I can't do it. I think the increase in volume is gradual enough for it to be doable for me, given some prior history; some of it recent, some of it not. At least one person has said that they're interested in what I'm doing, so "no one cares about" is already illogical. I'm not sure why you would need to tag it onto your argument.

As a further motivator: I want running to be a formula. An equation. Something I don't have to think about on the day-to-day. The less I have to think about "why" I'm doing something the easier it is to detach and execute, especially with something that can be perfected like this. If you look at what I've outlined thus far, you'll notice similarities to and pieces from pretty much every major influential source I've mentioned (save a few that are introduced when I get to blocks 5 and 6, and the competition phase).

I'm operating in good faith, and I think what I've described thus far is doable for me. I also think and hope that other people might benefit from observations about the mistakes and choices that I make, as well as the consequences of those actions. I like conducting this type of analysis. I know that given the amount of free time that I have to write about it that I will anyway, so why not open the methodology and analysis to critique? Time is expensive, but I think I've effectively argued that not only the in-depth critique by me, but also others, can be valuable. I have the time right now, so why not take every single drop of analysis from a run that I can? Truly look at every possible metric that I can and analyze as much of the data as possible. It feels as though it has merit from my perspective, but go off for as long as it takes the product of my training and over-thinking (from your perspective) to convince you.

Looks like I can run longer than I want to read wrote:

This guy is not an ultrarunner at all.

Too many drugs created too many needless words.

50mi in 2014 13:06 (Appalachia, 12k' vert)

50mi in 2015 12:55 (same race)

50k in 2015 4:21 (win, flat, 10x5k loop)

I've started taking THC since then. I think it makes me better. Shame that can't translate across multiple generational lines

prediction: DNS

0-1Tu Today's training is the rest portion of the macro interval training plan I've put myself on for GPP block. 5km, very chill, very relaxed. I'm pretty sure the apartment maintenance staff saw me smoking in the smoking area before my run, although I'm not sure why I'm stressed given the hypothetical lack of legal conflict. While yes, consuming marijuana in public is generally at conflict with the law; I do think that given the legal status of open consumption of tobacco (and the acceptability of the practice in this specific location), and the fact that I live in a state where consumption is recreationally legal for adults above the age of 21 (laws that were based on the legal consumption of alcohol and tobacco) leads me to think that I'm probably in the clear. They also haven't banged down my door yet, so I am significantly less concerned as the minutes pass.

There's a river nearby me with a nicely spaced out path, and the run there, on the path, and back is right around 5km exactly door-to-door. As stated above, I was a bit anxious at the beginning of the run given some environmental factors that I brought upon myself as the consequence of my choices. Again no music today, that was positive again. Less high than yesterday although ingestion via combustible smoking has a significantly faster onset for me than vaping. Cadence was okay, gait was okay. Yoga last night focused on upper back/shoulders and my hips, noticed a significantly positive benefit today. Had the thought on my run, what if the recovery runs are the reasons big guys get injured? Non-productive and clipped strides surely generate injury at some level. I don't have data to attach to that musing, just a thought.

DATA:

Splits: 5:05/5:34(eek)/4:46(ew)/5:04/4:49

Gain: 31m Cadence: 159 average, 190 max HR: 158avg/177hi

TLDR

I read some of what you wrote. But one thing I want to point out is you say you won the last ultra you did which was 2015? The world of ultra running has grown considerably since that time and races are much more competitive. Thats the year I started running ultras and I have seen even at the local races I do what would have won those races then will barely get you into the top 10 now. I dont know that winning should be your focus as you may be setting yourself up for failure which to me seems like may not be all that healthy for your mentally.

Seems like you are into ultra writing. I bet you are a hoot at social gatherings.

Your inability to express your thoughts in a brief clear manner is a serious flaw, I'm guessing it impacts every aspect of your life. Do you have any friends or meaningful relationships? Do you find people avoid you?

Making a successful running plan is painfully easy - but I'm sure you over-complicate everything so you want to over-complicate your plan. I also do not believe that you actually want anyone's advice - so you do you and best of luck.

What's a GPP block?

So much Bulls!it so little time.

Only one way to find out big dog, but please don't think I've been idle. I've been spending time on the roads since then, have been fairly successful, and have also stayed up to date on what's going on and how the sport has evolved.

I also stated that the goal, was to run two 50 milers in a 48 hour period. I said to a previous poster that I would like to win, and would like to put myself into a position to do that. I haven't even talked yet about my process for race and/or course selection, or what realistic competitive goals are in those environments. I'd like to win races, and given past experiences I feel that I can talk about myself in that context from a position of relative safety given recent results on the roads and historical results on the trails.

I'm pretty sure that I can do two 50 milers in a weekend. I'm not sure that if they're races that I can win or even place at them because I don't know which ones I would even be interested in doing. Additionally, it's fairly unreasonable to attach yourself to placing. There are so many other runners who can make decisions and strategic choices that I can't know or prepare for. Why would I commit emotional energy to an outcome dependent on that?

Looks like I can run longer than I want to read wrote:

What's a GPP block?

So much gold so little time.

fixed that ^ for you

Addressed it in the part you chose not to read old man, but it's General Physical Preparation. Borrowed from principles derived from Tudor Bompa's Periodizaiton, It's designed to get the body generally fit as opposed to focus fitness on running. I'm not going to be doing any hard running until mid November most likely, so for the time being I can take that intensity and focus it into other things. Some of the benchmarks I've laid out for myself are whether or not I can comfortably touch my toes, can I do 30 push ups without stopping, can I hold my breath for a minute; among others.

I don't want to ruin my body with running, so I'd rather rebuild the foundation before I start building up a base block. I've had hamstring and lower back issues in the past, so developing flexibility and elasticity in those areas as well as developing strength in the stabilizer muscles around them will help to prevent that.