[Fletcher]

Hey all,

So I thinking of doing the 100 mile Ultra-Trail Snowdonia so I can find some UTMB stones on route! But that’s in 22 weeks. Overall plan is to run UTMB in the next few years… hopefully.

My questions are:

Is that enough time to train?

My longest run was 80km during covid. It was impromptu as the event was canceled. Since then I’ve focused on triathlons. This year I raced 2x 70.3 and 1x Ironman – my fitness is still pretty good, albeit, triathlon-focused, I reckon I could complete a full Ironman now, I appreciate its different fitness.

I’ve also got an 82km flat(ish) ultra 4 weeks before UTS, I was thinking that I could use that as a race prep day, will that be enough time to recover?

My running volume is around 60km per-week mostly all on the trails, on top of that is 6-7hrs of structured bike sessions, 2-3hrs of swimming, and about 1-2 strength sessions with some half-hearted, yoga sessions sprinkled in. My weekly volume is 15-17hrs in total

I was planning on using Mike’s Big Vert plan and including some bike sessions depending on how I recover. Mainly because I enjoy it but that may change.

If anyone’s done UTS I’d love to hear your experiences…

Thanks for your help.

Topic

[rich.b]

rich.b on December 7, 2023 at 6:31 am #83082

Given your training volume and experience training, I would personally consider 22 weeks to be plenty of time. Think of many of the top ultra runners who spend their winters skiing nowadays and who then transition quite rapidly into running season.

Recovery is quite individual and of course depends amongst other things on your training going into the event (that is, the 82 km race) and how hard you choose to run that prep race. Before A races, I have often done a B race maybe 8 weeks out; this longer spacing because I still would run it as a proper race, only that I was not yet in peak form for the A race. Admittedly, if I enter a race, I run to do as well as I can (only once I have entered a race purely as training for another race, which was mentally tough to accept), so I need some recovery time and then still a few more weeks training for the A race.
But you know best your recovery capacities, and presumably if you take it as a long training run and you go into it having a good training base, 4 weeks can be enough.

rich_b