Not a mountain/trail race, but a fast flat course.
Not a mountain/trail race, but a fast flat course.
I would start gobbling pizza in the tens per day, and practice getting lost on my usual route to work at least 4-5 times a week.
I've typically just bumped my mileage and done a few build up races around the 30 or 40 mile mark.
If it's flat and fast, you'll need to focus on hip strength as it's likely to be a very repetive movement for the duration.
Worth also factoring in doing back to back long runs rather than trying to do giant single long runs.
Once I developed a base fitness level I would only run if I had time for two hour runs at an easy pace. Then I'd stretch the weekly long run to about 50km with fast miles in there towards the end. Two weeks out I'd do a back to back marathons with one day rest between. My specific training block of long runs with the workouts inside them would be about 8 weeks in length. I'd taper for almost a full week having the last run being the fastest and under two hours in a fasted state. I'd carb up then before the race and get to the race a couple days in advance to relax. That's what I'd do.
Back to back long runs seems to be popular with the ultra crowd.
(Not that I have any personal experience of running this kind of distance.)
One hundred kilometer wrote:
Not a mountain/trail race, but a fast flat course.
Train for and run a marathon 6 months before target 100K. Use typical marathon training with runs of up to 25 miles for this marathon.
Continue with marathon training after the marathon, but instead of having one long run on the weekend, have two on consecutive days. If you can build these long runs up to 35 miles on each day (one on Saturday, one on Sunday), then that's good. Have a mid week long run of 22-25 miles. All other days nothing shorter than 13 miles except for ONE day that is a 5 miler.
Do not take any scheduled days off, but take one if you start to feel really worn out. Do NOT take off the long run days.
For your first ultra, do all your runs at conversational pace.
Options:
1) Build the mileage up for three weeks and then have a lower week. Repeat.
2) As you are building the mileage of your two long runs on the weekend, if you want to take one weekend and do ONE long run of 40-45 miles toward the end of your training, do that.