[sally_h88]

I work as a hill walking guide so I spend 2/3 days per week working in the mountains. However, my heart rate during a four hour ascent might be about 105 and the bottom of my Z1 is 122. I sometimes have days when I’m working harder but I won’t know until I set off with my group, so I can’t plan those harder days into my training plan. Each day of work is usually about 16km with 1400m ascent.
I’m training for a 75km trail run with 3300m of ascent. If I run the required mileage and height gain plus the strength training plus my work days I won’t get a day off and I’ll be broken! What is the best way to incorporate my work into my training? Should I add weight to my pack to increase my heart rate? My pack already weighs about 5kg so will it not be relevant to trail running to make it heavier? Or should I include my work days in the total training volume I’m aiming for even though the intensity isn’t high enough?
Any advice would be amazing!

Topic

[Alyssa Clark]

Alyssa Clark on May 22, 2023 at 2:42 pm #78404

Hey Sally,
This is a great question but a tough one to answer as it is really a depends. You certainly should count your hill walking as training hours as ultras truly are a time on feet game. If one of your days falls on a strength day, you could carry extra weight and treat it more as a muscular endurance session. As for the other days, its really your judgement of your fatigue levels and time as to how your job weighs into the training. There isn’t one clear answer and working as a guide is challenging to balance with training. On easy days, I would definitely count your work as the training and then see if you can get in the quality workouts in when you are most well rested.