This 20-week ultra-running training plan is designed to help you tackle mountain running races or events with major elevation gain and loss. If you are considering running one of the famous multi-day routes in the Alps, this plan is for you. This plan assumes that you can handle routine 30-50 mile (50-80km) weeks. If you are daunted by the elevation demands of these runs and wonder how you’ll condition your legs to handle that much vertical, or if you live and train in a place that does not have easy access to mountains, this plan is for you.

The progression of the program will help those who need to develop running-specific muscular endurance and boost their fatigue resistance. The key difference in this plan vs. most other running plans is the inclusion of a special gym-based circuit-style strength workout to build the key muscular endurance. Specific leg power is built using our hill sprint workout, progressing through the first 10 weeks before transitioning into short uphill intervals for the development of anaerobic endurance during the remaining weeks.

You will determine the starting weekly distance and vertical gain/loss based on the event you are training for. Weekly distance and vertical will start at about 50% of that event’s largest single day’s total and then progress to about 90-100% of that figure for longer events and more than 100% for shorter events.

This plan is based on your RPE, or “Rate of Perceived Exertion,” where workout intensities are guided by how hard you are working based on your perception of effort (how hard the workout feels to you) rather than by heart rate. This plan is an adapted option for those who want to learn to calibrate their true effort levels in their workouts.

Whether you use an RPE-based or heart rate-based training plan, we recommend that you use a chest-strap heart rate monitor and GPS watch to log all your training.