Training for Trail Running: Base Training to Course Specialization

00:00.00
Alyssa
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast our mission is to elevate and inspire all mountain athletes through education and celebration. My name is Alyssa Clark and I will be your host today. We are joined by a return guest, our director of coaching Chantelle Robitaille. Chantelle is going to help us unpack the basics of training for trail runs. We will then tackle how a runner specializes in their training depending on what type of race they’re doing and considerations they should make for different races. Chantelle it’s awesome to have you great to see you too.

00:31.32
Chantelle
Hey Alyssa great to see you.

00:36.80
Alyssa
So I know we’ve talked about your background in getting into coaching but I know you’re also an avid trail runner. So I’d love to hear how you got into trail running and racing.

00:49.63
Chantelle
Kind of by accident. I used to do it. I was really into adventure racing and I moved to Switzerland, at some point when was it 2008 something like that and I didn’t have a team to run with anymore. So I just was. You know, running around on the trails and I had a really awesome coworker who also liked trail running so I would join him sometimes and he was doing the first year that I made this friend he was running TDS by default.

01:23.16
Alyssa
Nice.

01:26.72
Chantelle
Because he had applied for CCC got got rejected and in those days they would say like no like TDS was like the ugly stepsister or something nobody would. It’s so weird. It’s the best. It’s the best course of the series. But I digress and he was doing TDS and he and he was like oh do you want to.

01:34.73
Alyssa
Yeah, it still kind of is and it drives me insane but go ahead. Yes.

01:46.40
Chantelle
Like come and , support me on the course. I’m like yeah that would be cool and then I learned about this whole other world sort of by accident by default being there and then decided to challenge myself with a couple of trail races myself because there are a lot of great ones in Switzerland and then it just sort of grew from there. Yeah, just kind of by accident. It’s awesome.

02:10.60
Alyssa
That is the best place to get started. Wow it does not get much better than that and yet it’s crazy how over there. It’s just so much. A part of the culture. It’s just like what you do, especially they tend to be I I feel like a bit more invested in seasons then we are over here where they’re like oh yes, now it’s a ski touring season or skimo racing. Now it is trail running you know here’s some alpinism thrown in there whereas we I think tend to be much more monofocus of like I’m a trail runner. That’s what I do.

02:40.45
Chantelle
You know, yeah that was totally different and it wasn’t weird that someone would want to do other stuff too like you know everyone I knew that. As I met more trail runners like everyone else was also skiing and a lot of those people were also doing a lot of there was like a big trend for a while that like a lot of like hardcore mountaineers and even mountain guides like their s mer sport would be trail running. But if they were too beaten up for that then they were road bikers and they were like smashing 5 mountain passes in a weekend or something so it wasn’t like it wasn’t weird to be doing different things whereas you’re absolutely right? Like now that I’m in the US it feels like maybe there are people that do a lot of different things. , but yeah, it was a little bit more siloed here like in terms of being a trail runner or you were a skier and just like living for that season and I don’t know I like seasons and maybe I’m just I’m not afraid to suck at new things. So I like to just, you know, mix it up and do as many cool things as I can, you know, for what’s around me.

03:47.20
Alyssa
Oh I totally agree. I think I tend to get it especially the racing season has now become the entire year and so I think it’s really easy to get caught up into like oh I’ve got a race I’ve got to stay in the running season and if you look at I mean.

03:56.95
Chantelle
That would be tough.

04:06.46
Alyssa
Killian for example, he is a jack of all trades I mean doesn’t even identify as a trail runner which just cracks me up. He’s a mountain athlete and so I think that’s awesome anyway, if we’ve gone on about that. But I think this is important. , let’s start off.

04:13.36
Chantelle
Yeah.

04:25.81
Alyssa
The basics though if we’re looking at training. What does aerobic base building look like for trail runners because it does look a bit different than mountaineers but the same principles apply. So if you want to kick us off on that, that would be awesome.

04:39.82
Chantelle
Yeah, and I think that’s the most important thing to think about is that the basics still apply and particularly when we are thinking about it like I feel like these trends tend to happen a little differently in different places right? Where now we see in a lot of even american mountain towns that you have a lot of people that are going to be doing probably thanks to Killian, getting excited about doing some uphill skiing and some you know skimo and maybe even racing a little bit of skimo over the winter and then transitioning back to trail running so you know that maybe is changing a little bit. Regardless of the sport that you’re doing you know base building in pretty much everything, anything you do is going to be important and so we have different ways of moving around and then there’s different ways of training and typically our training on the whole looks. Like you know we can do our favorite hashtag Alyssa yeah hashtag unsexy basics your your basics really are you know, 80% of your training is going to look pretty easy and comfortable and 20% of it is going to look harder and a little bit less comfortable. , and then like maybe.

05:56.18
Chantelle
Maybe there’s a tiny bit that’s really uncomfortable. But for the most part. That’s how it’s going to look and so when we think about aerobic base think about anything that is like a base. , that means that there’s going to be stuff layered on top of it right? So you want to maintain it. You’re thinking that no one really wants to maintain their fitness but you’re going to want to maintain a certain amount of aerobic fitness. Even if you are switching to other things that you’re doing in other seasons. Even if it’s a little bit more couch surfing you’re just still going to want to maintain some level so that you’re not just starting from 0 every time you get panicked. You know if you live somewhere where it’s snowy. You get panicked when the snow starts to melt because you haven’t been running. And if you have been, keeping a certain aerobic base over the winter months which isn’t all that hard to do then there isn’t a need to panic right? You can take off the skis and go for a run and it might feel a little bit weird but you’re going to be fine. You’re going to be able to breathe and you know feel happy about how you’re going about it. But the main thing is to maintain a good aerobic base. It does mean running for what some people think is boring and slow. But I like to think of it as enjoying the scenery. You know you’re taking your time and you’re not exhausting yourself and it’s that awesome feeling of like I could go forever and that’s what your aerobic runs should feel like and if you’re doing that for 6 hours a week that is actually kind of maintaining a base.

07:30.57
Chantelle
And so then when you want to build onto that and you’re getting a little bit now you’ve signed up for your first race and it’s hopefully you’re not thinking about this when it’s three weeks away but you’re thinking about this when it’s like maybe fifteen to twenty weeks away

07:47.37
Chantelle
You’re going to want to think about like okay so I’m here now running sick you know, moving around 6 hours a week and I’m going to change that from whatever modality to running if you are changing modalities and I’m going to want to get to race day. What does it look like to get from here to there? , typically you’re gonna want to start with building that aerobic base a little bit more rather than being able to run comfortably at about 6 hours a week. You’re gonna want to extend that a little bit, probably more like 8 to 10 hours a week and make sure that is really comfortable before thinking about messing around with anything else.

08:25.30
Alyssa
Yeah, no, that’s perfect. I think the only thing I would add if you are coming off of a ski season or another type of exercise is that ligament and tendon strength. Like those need to be strengthened so you do have to be a little bit careful of j ping into the running and making sure that you aren’t moving too fit fast into that to make sure that those can catch up because running is so load bearing and kind of fatiguing just in terms of the pounding.

08:54.16
Chantelle
Yeah, good point and you might and easing into it can look very different. You know it could mean like if you’re used to already doing 6 hours of something it may not mean like you’re going to switch from that to 6 hours of running so you’re going to be doing maybe 6 hours of an aerobic based activity.

08:58.47
Alyssa
Exactly.

09:13.39
Chantelle
Maybe you start off with just increasing your running days per week like so maybe you start off and you are going to run maybe three days a week and you do something else that is a little more lower impact on the other days of the week and then you’re going to move that up to four days a week and then you’re going to move that up to five days a week and you might stay there five days a week running for the rest of your season and that’s totally fine. But you want to definitely check in on how you’re feeling and you may also have to walk and don’t feel bad about it. But you might have to do some walking. Which you know is a very important ultra running skill anyway, so you might be starting off with running 10 minutes and walking 1 or you might start off with running when it’s more or less flat and you’re going to. You know, walk or hike when it gets to be a hill and again you need to do that anyway in an ultra-running race. Most people are not Kilian Jornett and they’re not running the whole thing; most of us are mere mortals. Yeah, he does walk them. He walks them.

10:15.51
Alyssa
I think even he walks some I don’t think he runs every mile. Yeah, yeah, so I think that that leads us really well into the next point which is and we’re seeing this a ton coming out about zone 2 training in zone 2 articles.

10:33.43
Alyssa
What does that look like for a runner in a mountain mountainous area I mean I can just answer part of it already is like I have so many runners that I have to remind but they’re like oh my gosh I was out of zone 2 this entire run I’m like but you can walk like walking is great. Please walk please practice that.

10:52.88
Alyssa
Ah, so yeah I mean what does it look like how do you get your runners to shift the mindset to walking is okay.

10:59.51
Chantelle
Yeah, that could be tough, especially if someone’s coming from a traditional running background like they’ve run cross country or they’ve run track or they’ve run marathons because then especially if they’re coming from a marathon background or like a collegiate running background. It’s all about splits and laps.

11:17.82
Chantelle
You know times and paces and all of these things and for trail running you know? Even if you’re an ultrarunner and you’re running on the road. All that stuff kind of goes out the window. It really comes down to effort and time because you know we’re going to be out for a long time and so you know.

11:36.78
Chantelle
Having a specific pace isn’t always going to work if we’re running a long race. We’re also running through different environments so we might be going through different levels of altitude. We could also have pretty significant shifts in the weather right on a race day we could start at.

11:44.28
Alyssa
Yeah.

11:53.41
Chantelle
This degree and we could get to that degree and then go back to degree if it’s a 200 miller like they’re going to be a lot of shifts and so we hear a lot about zone 2 training and it’s nothing new. There’s nothing in the sports or training world. It’s just like buzzwords or whatever that just keep coming back. So you know none of this stuff is like earth-shattering news. But really what zone 2 is is zone 2 is the upper limit. We think about zone 2 training that is sort of the upper end of your aerobic training zone so that is going to be comfortable. Nice easy breathing and that is where you’re going to spend a lot of your time you know zone one is going to feel. It’s still easy but probably a little bit easier that might be more like a recovery style run. Like I think about if you think about a recovery style run zone one that’s like we could be almost talking as easily as we are now right? If we talk about zone 2 and we were like going along and recording a podcast as we’re moving which maybe we should do one day. Be interesting.

13:05.24
Alyssa
We should totally do that. I’m down.

13:09.66
Chantelle
Is a real zone 2 podcast and we could be running along and we could still be having a conversation but maybe I’d be taking a breath you know after every 5 or 6 sentences right? But I could still converse pretty easily and that’s what zone 2 feels like and that’s where you should feel most of the time. And if you’re doing a trail race unless it’s something shorter like if it’s a 50k or shorter that’s going to be different. You’re not going to be spending most of your time zone 2 you’ll be spending some zone 2 some zone 3 and maybe beyond a little bit . You know if it’s longer than that, if it’s longer than a 50k race then you are absolutely spending the majority of your time in zone one and zone 2 and so for many reasons we have to get comfortable being there.

13:58.44
Alyssa
Absolutely and I think the other part of it too and the reason why it’s so important or 1 of the reasons why it’s so important is that keeping a lower heart rate so keeping in the zones below your aerobic threshold allows you to keep eating and ultra marathon trail races are eating games and what happens when you go beyond but you start getting into that zone 3 zone 4 is that you are a only burning carbohydrates and it becomes a lot harder on your body to get blood flow to your stomach and so you start feeling nauseous. You start having a lot of trouble getting food down and you’re already playing a losing battle. Where you’re not able to take in enough like your body can’t process enough calories per hour as it’s burning. So really, what we’re trying to do is delay the onset as much as possible by taking in fuel and so if we go too far into zone 3 and some 4 and we get really nauseous and we can’t take in anything. We are really hurting ourselves. So and I say this from experience because I very often get far too excited and go out way too hard and then surprise I get nauseous and so if you back yourself off it will pay dividends later in the race because you’ll be able to keep eating and you’ll be able to at least partially keep up with your fuel stores and be able to be more successful throughout the race.

15:42.47
Chantelle
Yeah that’s a really good point Alyssa about efficiency and also I think we think about when we’re training. Yes, we’re training our muscles and we’re training our brains and we’re training our hearts and our lungs and our ligaments and our tendons and all those things but also what we’re training is our metabolism and so we have our metabolism is what is responsible for keeping us alive keeping us moving and you know we really have when we’re doing zone 2 training. We are helping to improve our aerobic metabolism we’re teaching our body how to keep moving and how to continually create and process and use energy to keep us going when we get out of zone 2. You know, then our body is more reliant on our anaerobic energy pathways and anaerobic doesn’t mean no oxygen it just means that there is no oxygen needed to create that energy. So when we are working in zone 3 rather than zone 2 then we are more reliant and it’s not like a hundred. It’s not like a switch flips or anything your body doesn’t know about these systems. Ah but we are more reliant on our anaerobic energy pathways and so we are burning more carbohydrates at that point in time and so when.

17:11.27
Chantelle
The body can do that and it can hang out there and it can do that. But it’s got an hour of time. That’s it. That’s all it’s got so we think about it like I like to think about it like a pack of matches like you can only burn so many and that’s your zone 3 you’ve only got so much of it to use so you’ve got to use it. Like really sparingly when you need it. So maybe there’s times on a workout or in a race where you are going to get into zone 3 but that’s got to be strategic like maybe you’re going to go a little faster because you’re in a Congo line going up a hill and you want to get around some people so that you can get to your comfy place. Do it. You know. Or you are ah, not feeling really great and you see the aid station and you want to have a little time to use the port-to-potty and refuel it. Whatever you use it like, use it carefully and understand that you know when you are in that state and you are working harder like that. Your body is working so hard to keep you moving and also if you’re some if it’s a hot race. Your blood flow is really in competition and in high demand to keep the brain going. We got to keep the heart pumping. We’ve got to get some blood to the skin to cool us off. We’ve got to get blood moving to all those muscles to keep us moving and what’s the last on the list the stomach so we don’t have much going to the stomach when we’re working hard like that and that’s why typically we end up feeling like a sour stomach like we don’t want to eat or we don’t feel hungry or even you think sometimes if you do a hard workout do a tempo workout or something like that. You don’t feel like eating and that’s exactly why.

18:59.66
Alyssa
Yeah, it’s and that is often people’s kryptonite. It’s just like I couldn’t take any calories down or I was throwing up and just had nothing left. I like that kind of the simple way that I like to explain it to people when we are talking.

19:16.75
Alyssa
What fuel source we’re using is that with a marathon the common thing is hitting the wall at mile twenty a very simplistic way of looking at that is. You burn about one hundred calories per mile of running. You have about two thousand calories of carbohydrate stores if you’re completely full. There is about mile twenty and so that means that you have really been mostly burning carbohydrates and that by shifting by becoming really efficient at zone 2 you are able to and also being able to take in the fueling you can push that mile 20 wall back far enough in ultras. I mean it does happen people bonk etc. But you’re hoping that you’re never really going to hit that wall like people do in marathons because most of the time we aren’t redlining quite as much as a marathon. But that’s kind of the example I like to use of a really easy way to think about how we use our fuel sources is with that wall analogy.

20:34.17
Chantelle
Yeah, and that’s the thing to remember is that like we are typically it is like an endurance eating contest. We have to be able to keep eating you know and that’s a good analogy that your body can only store so many carbohydrates but have plenty of fat stores. So we’ve got to keep bringing more carbohydrates in to keep us going and so if we are working at a lower intensity. We will be able to keep eating and as long as you keep on top of it like nibble nibble Sip Sip. You know the whole time then you should be fine. Just to keep that going little by little and not upsetting your stomach, rather than I mean there are those people that can like slam half a pizza and keep moving, but typically you know they’re moving pretty slowly after the fact in order to digest.

21:29.21
Alyssa
Yeah I’ve never been and never been able to be one of those people. Ah, I’m jealous. I think this was a great way to talk about that aspect of running. We could go on for podcasts and podcasts about that. But let’s go to some common questions about building mileage. So first of all, how do you build carefully and safely. Do you do back-to-back runs? Do you just run along a whole bunch and you’re good like you’re ready to go. Do you run a hundred miles in preparation for running a hundred miles could you help us unpack some of these Chantelle?

22:05.45
Chantelle
Oh man, that’s a lot in one question. But it’s always that annoying answer it depends. It depends on who you are and what you’re training for and what your training history is and all of that stuff typically speaking. You know we think about the different variables in training. So we have volume, how many hours are you running in a week and typically for trail runners. We are tracking things in terms of hours per week. You know how many hours we’re running each day, how much we’re running over a week typically not in miles because. That’s you know, not as easy for ultra runners. But you’re tracking volume whether you’re tracking it in miles or in hours and then we have intensity. So how hard are those sessions going to be? Are we talking so you know zone one zone 2 zone 3 zone 4 that’s your intensity. How hard are you working so that’s another element that goes into your training and then we have density of the training so out of those days of the week how close they are together. How are they distributed? So you know where do you rest days fall and how many hard workouts are done in a row. What are you doing you know back-to-back. All of that stuff. So when we look at all of those variables over time if we are changing those variables. We don’t want to change more than 1 variable per week.

23:34.42
Chantelle
If someone is running five days a week and they are working towards one hundred mile or something longer and they’re building up to running six days a week if we are running five days a week this week and next week we’re going to run six days a week we are not going to add another variable on top of that. So let’s say this week we are running five days and we are running 10 hours next week. We’re going to run for six days. We might also run 10 hours and see how the body responds having one last rest day and a week if that goes well then the next week we might. We can then look at increasing one variable. So now we’re okay with the six days a week then the next week we can run a little bit more and then how much would that be if we look at the volume piece of the puzzle. Most people can safely increase their volume about 10% per week. That’s pretty safe for most people. If you’re doing something like a running camp whether you’re doing that as an organized running camp or you’re organizing a little training camp on your own for four days you can probably double your volume in that short little time. But that’s going to be a transient thing. You’re going to have a little bit of extra rest before that you’re going to have a little bit of extra rest afterwards and then go on with your training but typically speaking about 10 % increase per week is pretty safe for most people but know your body you know if if that feels like too much then you’re increase in volume increments might be a little more conservative and that’s okay, and then also you think about the the density of the workout. So let’s say you’re doing a phase of training where you are doing some faster work. So maybe you are doing some zone 3 intervals or something like that. You know if you’re adding those in maybe you want to make sure that you have a rest day in between those 2 right? So you’re going to have a rest day in between those 2 and you’re not necessarily going to have them back to back. Some people can totally handle those back to back. But then they might do those back to back and then have a rest day or have a recovery day or something like that. So you always want to think about whether you know where those variables are going to fit but you wouldn’t you know, suddenly from one week to the next change from zone 2 focus to a zone three focus. And then suddenly start piling on the volume. So again, you always want to think about what are the variables in your training and changing only 1 variable at a time and making sure that those changes that you make are going to be sustainable and that they’re in smaller increments.

26:23.50
Alyssa
Definitely that makes a lot of sense going touching on 2 other parts within that there. Yeah, it’s a whole bunch of depends. But the back-to-back long run is often a tool that runners use during ultras and it totally depends on who I’m coaching and how well they’ve responded to it. Because I think that there’s kind of this camp of either you do the back-to-back long runs or you’re not a back-to-back long run type of person and I think that there’s a lot of gray area within that.

26:45.69
Chantelle
It does.

27:00.69
Alyssa
And personally as a coach I have some athletes that work really well for them and so that’s what I do in my own training often. Well I just get a lot of just a lot of volume because I’m a runner who can handle a lot of volume. Ah, and so my feeling is that back-to-back long runs are really dependent on the individual and dependent on where the individual is in their journey. What they’re training for and I often like to especially if I have someone who’s doing mountainous races where hiking is going to be a big part of it is that I will have them hike one of the days and so they’re on their feet for longer, but it isn’t necessarily the pounding or the fatigue of another big longer running day so using hiking as a tool because and my coach has been really good about teaching this to me is that if you went from a 10 minute mile to a 5 minute mile running that would be incredible like a 5 minute difference holy crap it is not that hard to go from a 20 minute walking mile to a 15 minute walking mile if you practice.

28:16.61
Alyssa
And so if you think about actually practicing walking and walking quickly and efficiently you can make the same percentage difference which is incredible and can save so much time. So I’m a huge advocate of practicing walking with purpose.

28:17.80
Chantelle
That’s true.

28:36.20
Alyssa
Rather than when you get into a race and you start feeling really tired and so you just start dragging and all of a sudden you’re walking thirty forty five minutes and if you practice efficient walking you can move quite quickly and really not lose that much time.

28:54.19
Chantelle
Yeah, that makes a big difference like we talked a lot about metabolic efficiency and being you know, teaching your metabolism to be flexible, right? It’s the same with your pace and your mode of movement should also be flexible because if someone is only training on, you know, flat ground all the time and then they go to the hills then it’s going to obviously it’s going to be hard so you want to have you know some good flexibility and diversity. Especially when you know what you want to think about. I know this was a sort of plan thing we wanted to talk about as well. But thinking about what kind of race you’re preparing for and making sure that you are training in a way that is specific to your race and when we’re planning our training. We want to think about these variables. When we have that figured out then we want to layer in a couple other things right? We want to practice dialing in our nutrition and our hydration plans. We want to practice with the gear that we’re going to wear but we also want to think about what kind of terrain we’re going to be running on. Is there any elevation? Any big climbs or is it going to be what other factors is it badwater? Ah where you’ve got like a long time running on the road and a significant amount of vertical and we have heat and we have altitude like it’s got all the things to throw at you.

30:20.36
Chantelle
Want to think about knowing the variables of training. You should also think about the other elements of your race that you can layer in and make sure that you’re practicing as well. So that if you are going to be doing a race where there is a good amount of walking or power hiking. Or uphill hiking you want to be as efficient as you can with that.

30:42.80
Alyssa
Definitely I mean for example I have still yet to finish Tor Des Geants, but have also done moab 240 in October and people think ah, two hundred mile or 200 hundred-ish milers training should be similar actually my training for both was quite different because Moab in comparison is barely a third of the elevation gain that tor is and so for tor as I said it was just a ton of walking fast. And so more of my focus was how do I hike as efficiently as possible and prepare my legs for really long downhills for Moab, you can run a lot of Moab and so the focus was more on how do I keep running at an efficient pace for just really long periods of time. On less technical terrain and so even within you know this crazy two hundred mile distance there is so much specificity that you can get within it. So with that being said, when should I or a runner. Be thinking about putting this specificity into my training when it should start approximately.

32:00.14
Chantelle
Well typically speaking when you think about when you’re kind of organizing your training. You always think about like where am I now when I’m about to prepare this plan and then where where do I need to be so like we said hopefully you’re around twenty weeks before so that you have time if you haven’t been running or not running too much for a while you’ve got a little bit of a time to kind of get back into it. You’ve got time to build a little bit of a base and then you want to think about what is specific to the race. So typically for most trail runners. You know if it’s over a 50k then what is specific to your race is probably zone one and zone 2 plus the other elements that we just talked about right? Is it vertical? Is it a certain type of terrain. You know what are the special elements that you need to plan for and prepare for. That’s going to be what your specific period looks like it’s going to be again Zone 2 with those extra things then if we start with zone 2 then what do we do with this other segment of time and you think about that specific stuff like race specific stuff. We’re looking at probably eight weeks. You know six if you’re in a time crunch, eight weeks if you have the luxury of time then in that other time. What are some areas where that are not specific to the race but still going to be important so we talked about metabolic efficiency before.

33:30.23
Chantelle
If we just trained at zone 1 and zone 2 all the time like that’s great in some respects but we are you know our bodies need to be as efficient as possible. We want to optimize all of our abilities, right? We want to pay attention to our aerobic capacity. And Aerobic energy systems. But we also want to spend some time developing our anaerobic energy systems as well. So in those times that’s when you can bring in some higher intensity work. That is at zone 3 and zone 4 you can do that you know further away. And then you’re going to kind of when you’re sort of minimum eight weeks before your event. That’s when you’re going to want to come back to the more specific work. So you’re going to come back to more of a focus on zone 2 and zone one you’re going to be making sure that you have a good understanding of the course profile. So maybe you’re going to put some vertical targets in place for yourself. So if you look at the race course for example and find out what the elevation profile looks like and does the elevation gain match the elevation loss or is it different because you might have a course that is net uphill or net downhill. So that’s going to be important in terms of preparation. You’re going to want to kind of mimic that in your training as well. So you’re going to want to try and also the surface or condition. If it’s a road if it’s a road ultra for example like now we’re at a time in the year where there are some road ultras coming up. We’ve got the keys 100 and daytona and all of that probably that people have been preparing for and you want to make sure that you’re spending a good chunk of your time training on the road. So your body is prepared for that. But it’s also nice to get a mental and physical break by doing some of your running on the trails. But you’re gonna want to in that specific period be more on the terrain that is more specific to your event and if you don’t live somewhere where you can mimic that then you want to try to find ways to bring that in. So maybe you are doing some hill repeats. To make up some vertical maybe you are doing some time on a treadmill with a 15% incline maybe you are in your strength workouts. Maybe you’re doing some step ups or box steps. And some of the muscular endurance workouts that we have at uphill athlete are really helpful for that too to prepare your body for that different type of strain that it takes.

36:10.37
Alyssa
Absolutely no, that was great. I’ll touch on the if you live in a flat area and you are having to work in that incline that those step ups are something that we often don’t consider is that we think so much about the uphill and it’s actually the downhill that causes the most stress on your body. So it’s really important to make sure I always focus on strength for my athletes who are in flat areas and are needing to do downhills because your quads can get really destroyed I mean I think we’ve all felt doms which is delayed onset muscle soreness which is that quad tearing like oh my gosh I feel like my quads are about to rip in half feeling so it’s really important if you do live in a flat area to make sure you’re actually doing some of those step downs where you’re really focusing on strength as a part of getting ready for the race because the downhills will be challenging. I think the other part just to give a glimpse of what I do when I’m preparing for a race and hopefully this will help is that I’ll pull up the elevation profile pretty early on. And I’ll pick out kind of the major details of the race. So for example, I’ve have a race coming up it’s about a three thousand foot climb to start and then it’s kind of these like one thousand foot to to less like kind of poppy Hills and so I focus on okay I want to make sure that I feel really comfortable tackling what a three thousand foot climb at the beginning feels like and I think that it gives a lot of confidence to runners if you.

38:03.26
Alyssa
Find one of the most challenging or two most challenging climbs in the race and know that you can do that no matter what whether it’s on a stairmaster whether it’s on a treadmill and either be like okay I know what it feels like to climb continuously for three four thousand feet if that’s in your race. That’s a major detail and then I go all right I’m going to have a downhill about the same and then I need to be good at powering through thousand foot climbs and being able to run off of them. So then a lot of my training besides that bigger climb is running to me like kind of those smaller hills. I also try to do some research on what type of terrain it is so for example, I’ve done HURT. HURT is notoriously technical and so I try to get on as much like run in the worst part of the trails in California that I can find. Mud snow dirt like any of that. Whatever I can get because California isn’t as technical for the most part as Hawaii and so I’m trying to find how do I get myself prepared for these technical aspects if I say I’m running in California and a race I’m like so Vermont is also very technical but the Vermont one hundred. There’s a lot of dirt road running which isn’t as much so you do have to be good at being able to run smoother surfaces. It’s really important to figure out not only the race profile but also the terrain surface and practice how you’re going to move along that terrain. If there’s sand in the race, if you know it’s going to be kind of snowy and muddy, make sure you’re taking that all into account. So you’re prepared mentally but like your feet are prepared your muscles are prepared and also just going into it with the confidence of I’ve done everything to get as specific as I can and handle what’s thrown at me and the last part is that all that probably will change so it’s just making sure that. You do the best to prepare but also prepare for the adaptation that it will probably never end up exactly as you think.

40:23.17
Chantelle
Yeah, especially I’m just thinking about some of the big races in California this year after the big snowfall like what that’s going to be like but that’s a good point and we live in a you know this is very different than when I started trail running you know back in 2008 like there was.

40:29.46
Alyssa
Oh my gosh. It’s gonna be insane.

40:41.58
Chantelle
Not really no one was really putting out race reports or I was running a lot of small races where there wasn’t really a lot of information and now like you could look up all like people are so amazing at sharing their race reports and race reviews so doing. Ah, quick little search shouldn’t be hard for you to find the information to find the elevation profile to look at some of the features some people you know like have running with go pros I can’t imagine but thank you for those of you that do so that I can see. What the terrain looks like when I’m trying to learn and read more than one you know, different years for different conditions like you said Alyssa. It could totally change and I think that’s really important because I think about Leadville for example. And a lot of people think Leadville it’s a high altitude race and there’s hope pass you got to climb it both ways and so it’s going to be like super hard climbing. All these people are training for Leadville and they are not doing any consistent running. Well what is Leadville actually a really runnable race with the exception of hope pass.

41:40.50
Alyssa
A running race. Yeah.

41:45.70
Chantelle
So people are just getting slammed because there are really lots of really awesome runnable sections on fire roads that are just gravel roads with little and I would see people on like a tiny little climb like one hundred two hundred feet and they’re having to hike it because they just haven’t practiced actually running. So you want to think about those. What are the aspects and details of the course and practice the different ones like is it a big climb at the start, is it like rolling hills and then it’s a big sting in the tail with a big climb at the end. Is it a couple of big climbs and then like mentally trying to bring some of that stuff into your training so that you can know how that feels.

42:29.48
Alyssa
Definitely yeah I would also say and I was making generalizations but within like you automatically think oh Colorado just as you were saying. It’s got to be rocky. It’s got to be a really tough trail and Leadville is super runnable. But Ouray for example, is not super runnable. So I think it’s really important. It’s so important to do that research and as you were saying I mean I will look up.

42:46.37
Chantelle
Not no, It’s one of the hardest. One of the hardest races in the US I would say.

43:01.82
Alyssa
Youtube videos of people and just be like okay that’s what part of the course is and of course yeah, you’re not going to get the whole sense of it. But you’re going to get some sense of it that can save you from not realizing that Leadville scares the crap out of me because of how runable it is. That’s kind of why I have not put my name in the hat. It’s so fast. But yeah I think that doing your research is probably one of the most important things and also not getting carried away by the name of a race I think as we see. More and more races come to prominence and gain notoriety to really make sure that the course is something that you’re going to enjoy, not just doing it because it’s a name. So for example.

43:45.93
Chantelle
Okay.

43:49.94
Alyssa
You know you could and not that all these races aren’t amazing, but there could be a race. I’ve heard that name a bunch of times and then you come to realize oh it’s a road race or oh it’s some type of race that I don’t actually enjoy running on that surface. I don’t really want to train on that surface and so I would say just be open-minded and do your research about the type of race that it is. Just because something’s iconic. It may not actually be that much fun to train for.

44:18.53
Chantelle
Yeah, and like and knowing what are your? What are your strengths you know as a runner you know like you said Alyssa Leadville scares you because it’s fast runnable. You know it’s a fast runnable course with the exception of you know, 2 big climbs and you know you would be more suited to like High lonesome or Ouray or something would be like more within your comfort zone whereas to many other runners running Ouray or high lonesome would be really frightening for them. So it’s just a matter of knowing what kind of races you enjoy and what kind of trails you particularly enjoy. Do you want something with loads of people that’s super hyped up or do you actually enjoy something where you might be alone most of the time and thinking about all of those elements are really important to think about like you’re going to put a lot of time and money and blood sweat and tears and sacrifice. Family times social things all kinds of stuff right? So you want to make sure that what you’re putting in is all going to be worthwhile and you know I’ve heard so many stories of people saying like I did that race and it was totally not what I thought it was going to be you know and and they’re kind of disappointed.

45:33.80
Chantelle
With the information we have out there there’s no need. You know there’s you know the blogs the race reports the Facebook groups like get out there hop on some you know some open for ask people about their experience and you will be surprised like we love running. We are usually pretty happy to talk about running so put it out there. You know within your networks and your social networks if there’s a race that you feel like you can’t find enough information out there on and chat with someone who’s done it and I think that’s also really important to get to know some of the ins and outs of what to expect.

46:16.46
Alyssa
Absolutely and I think that goes also to a safety point where I mean I’ll use Ouray as I did that a couple years ago is that Ouray has some pretty gnarly thunderstorms and there’s a high likelihood you’re going to end up on a high pass. And there might be a storm rolling in and if that’s something that you’re like that’s not what I want to do then you really have to take that into account and also from a perspective of packing for the race. Knowing what to carry. It’s like safety is something not to take lightly. So I think just the more and more we get into the sport the more people we have in it. We just have to keep hitting home that races, particularly trail races are not something that we can do without having some wilderness background training or knowledge. You know we shouldn’t be going out because being in a race doesn’t mean that something can’t happen to you. There’s not this kind of magical bubble of protection just because you’re in a race. Yes, there are definitely more safety measures but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be self-sufficient as well. So I think just keeping that in the back of our head and making sure that we go into these situations prepared as well.

47:32.88
Chantelle
That’s a great point and I think probably most people don’t think about course information and studying course information as part of your training. But if you haven’t hopefully our little chat today will change your mind because that’s a really important one.

47:52.23
Alyssa
Yeah, it’s like what do you do if you’re on a thirteen thousand foot peak at two PM and a Colorado thunderstorm is rolling in like and the races often give you a lot of documents to prepare you and they’re really good at safety briefing. But it’s your job to read them. And to make sure that you feel prepared to handle it as well. So awesome. Well Chantelle is there anything else that we should touch on before we sign off.

48:22.73
Chantelle
I would say again just bringing home the point that there are a lot of races out there. There are more and more runners which is really exciting and I think one thing that is really cool about ultra running is the participation from people of all different ages like from 20s up until their 80s and like there’s still a man couple of men and women that are still doing like timed one hundred mile races which is amazing. So it’s still kind of a new sport. There’s still a good amount of longevity. And there’s a lot of good information out there. So you know if you’re preparing for whether it’s your first race or not your first race. There’s lots of resources out there. You don’t necessarily have to be working with a coach. But if you want to work with a coach. There’s lots of great coaches out there that can help you. There’s lots of podcasts like ours that can give you information and guide you along the way and then there’s also kind of in between options too. You know joining groups whether it’s a live group or it’s an in-person group to get some help you know you don’t have to do this alone and I think a big part of what we do is the community that we have around us so you know don’t be afraid to put your hand out there and get out of your comfort zone a little bit and be able to learn from others in our community and also share what you have been able to learn yourself from your running.

49:53.61
Alyssa
I love that. Even just here, we have had someone who put their hand out and mentored us or helped us along the way and I think that’s such an integral part of this community. And it’s part of it, not so much the challenge of us versus them or anything like that. It’s like us versus the challenge of the race and the challenge of pushing ourselves to new distances and new adventures and so it’s not yes, there is a competitive element to it if you want there to be. But that’s not at the heart of it.

50:32.45
Chantelle
Yeah, that’s a great point. I love that.

50:37.56
Alyssa
All right? Well Chantelle. Thank you so much for this great conversation. If you enjoyed this episode and you’re enjoying the uphill athlete podcast please rate review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, it’s not just one but a community we are uphill athlete.