SKY and running: training principles

 After knowing your why and setting your goals for this year, it is time to plan your trainings. Although the details of your training blocks will change a lot depending of your history, capacities and ambitions, there are some general principles that should apply to most of us. Let’s go through them!

Setting the calendar…

Define a calendar that is realistic with your experience, condition, availability and ambition. Many people register to the races just because others do or increase the difficulty too quick or at times where work of life commitments are very demanding. Take a holistic view of your life when you set a calendar that is not too stressful yet exciting.

• Prioritize your goals and segment them. Make sure there are not more than 3-5 big goals per year.
•  Give time for other things in your life that require space and are equally or more important
• Make sure the “big days” related to personal or work events are far from your key goals. Space at least one week before and after.
•  Have a plan B for events or goals that are very hard to get or heavily dependent on weather conditions
• Be open to the unexpected, and to changes of the plan, if there are good reasons for that

Setting your training plan…

There is a different training plan for every person, every context and every goal. Do not aim to copy others plan or replicate blindly what it worked in the past.

A bucket list to succeed!

•  Take into consideration you are training history and health (how many years, elevation, km’s and hours of activity) to support your future training. Many people copy the pro’s approaches or volume as a reference, without considering the background, the recovery time or just the natural talents.
• Spread your goals so there is time for recovery, hard sessions and other obligations/commitments. Having A,B,C races will help if you are very disciplined, but my advice is to pick goals that allow you to insert a full training cycle (6 weeks).
• Pick goals not by how popular they are as the only reason, make sure the challenge excite you, and the other factors are side effects but not the main driver.
• Have budget for a trainer, physio and medical checkups, they are incredibly useful sources.
• Make sure there are good chances for specificity in your training: heat or cold adaptation, running at night, altitude, very technical courses… Those are elements that must be as part of ensuring your chances for accomplishing the goal. If your area is very different to your target, it will be harder but with creativity and some time well spent is possible. Training camps and long vacations in the goal area can do the work.

You are ready, now the details…

There are some components that your weekly training and training blocks cannot miss. Please keep in mind that when planning it, with your trainer or alone.

It is very important to have consistency in your training, so the density ( the amount of sessions) is more important to the duration of the sessions. To visualize it, 10 sessions of 1 hour are better than 1 session of 10 hours.

Running can be quite demanding to the body, specially for normal runners with full time jobs and not perfect or very imperfect technique. To keep your body and mind healthy, make sure your training is rich in variety and activities that enrich your fitness and running economy.

Focus on long term development over short term success. Making you a healthier and more efficient runner is more important that the next race or event. You are training for a life, not for an event.

If you are reading this you are an athlete, not matter how fast you are.  What you think, eat and do during the day are very relevant to your success. Your sleeping habits, position, nutrition, relationships and mood are critical to ensure a long happy athlete lifestyle. Be holistic, this is a 24/7 passion.

Now that you are set up for a long lasting, exciting and happy athlete path, let’s see the content of our training plan…

·         Prioritize consistency over the year. That’s means that it is better to have high density of training (many short sessions), that few very long sessions.

a.       Ensure there is variety in your training. Even if your focus in on running in the mountains it is crucial for longevity to work on:

                                                               i.      Technik: make sure you are not heeling, like 99% of people who start running in adulthood, your position is right, and you are engaging your full body

                                                             ii.      Efficiency/Economy: endurance sport is about going far as fast as possible, but as energy and biomechanics are limited factors, having a good running economy that minimize energy demand and maximized energy output is a critical skill

                                                           iii.      Cross training: unless you are very gifted, you will need a lot of cross training to keep volume high and injuries far. Elliptic training, hiking, mountain biking, skiing, climbing… are great activities with less impact than running but still a great deal of transference to mountain running. Make sure they do not cover too much of your time with them because you will see diminishing returns.

                                                           iv.      Polarize your training. Most of the people do their runs in the middle zone, so they do not recover enough for the hard sessions. Make your easy sessions very easy and your hard sessions hard. A good rule of thumb is that your easy running should be 80% of your running time (you can talk easy) and the remaining 20% hard (few words) over the year.

·         Enjoy healthy foods, do not stick to a painful diet. Instead of a strict diet, focus a sustainable healthy way to enjoy foods. Have plenty of vegetables, and little or no processed foods, especially those full of saturated fats or sugar. Based your calories intake on the activity of the days and not on rigid plans. Check with a nutritionist or doctor, so you can find a weight that is realistic and good for the activity you do.

·         Material, little gain but too much to lose. Make sure you have the material that supports your city and goal specific trainings, and use it before your goals. While your footwear and external layers (rain jacket or leggings) are critical parts to ensure you develop your activity without problems, it is also no less important to train with the material you will use during your goals: your backpack, water and food supplies, poles, lamp…

·         Sleep, the most effective-cheap-easy way to get better. Protect your sleep. Sleeping is not only a must to ensure long term health and high performance, but also the best mental and physical recovery. Some practical tips could be:

a.       No screens after 10pm, keep regular sleeping patterns as possible (same time to go to sleep and wake up, the body likes habit),

b.       use naps when possible but not at the expense of good sleeping. A mistake I have done several times is to sleep too many hours in the weekend, and then on Sunday it is very hard to sleep on time. Make sure you “maximize” the min of sleeping hours, avoiding peaks or valleys.

c.       Last point, when getting very soar, just try to sleep long for some days, you will see how amazingly your muscle recover. Is free, feels great and it work.

·         Leave no space for randomness, a purpose drive motivation: Make sure every training has a purpose, that means do not let to the last minute decide what is today purpose, as that will lead normally to the lazy bug step in, or will add a lot of mediocre runs at z3 into your training. Here is a list of checkboxes you can use, and should tick quite often:

§  Endurance: the purpose of this training is to increase our capacity to last at a certain pace for hours. That could go from 2 to 6 hours depending on the goal and intensity, and ideally be in a terrain similar to the goal. Make sure that those are easy enough so you can recover in maximum two to three days.

§  Speed: the purpose of this sessions is to allow you go faster in the future with less effort. The idea is: it will get faster, but not easier. Those sessions normally last between 40’ and 1 hour. There are different intervals for different distance, a for endurance runners a good rule of thumb is to make your intervals at your best 10k pace or effort, and add recovery in between since that has proven to allow you to train longer in high intensities.

§  Uphill/downhill: specially for those leaving far from big mountains, this is critical. Make sure you spend approx. one session every 10 days to train uphills. There are two trainings I really like:

·         The first is in a quite steep (>12%) uphill with around 40-50m of elevation and do it as fast as possible, for at least 10 times. That will improve running economy and making climbing mountains easier.

·         The other training is in the treadmill, where you can push 10-15% grades and increase the effort with the speed. From 4’ intervals with 3’ easy run, to 45’ in a vertical kilometer fashion (non -stop uphill), that will allow you to get used to the long uphills.

·         For downhills you can do w series, in the small hill I mentioned before, so you go up strong and go down even stronger, and chill after every series. That accumulates a lot of elevation gain, but I think is quite high in injury risk. In order to improve downhill, I suggest to use all your long runs in the trails with the main purpose of running strong the downhills. That will be at a reasonable pace as you will have to do many, so injury risk is low, plus is ideally on downhills similar to your goals.

·         Strength: for this type of training I can only emphasize how critical is that for longevity and improve you running economy, not to mention protecting your joins for such a demanding sport. Make sure you find a professional that stablish a routine that is specific for the sport and to your physical needs:

o   Ensure you core. Abdominals and back must be strong to stabilize your body.

o   Most of runners have weak tights and gluteus, make sure your strength sessions include exercises for such important muscles

o   Once you have a good overall fitness level, add plyometric and explosive training: short movements that are executed very fast will translate into your running.

o   In general, I suggest to focus more on strength in the off-season but never drop it totally, so there should be one day per week for strength all year round.

·         Specific: especially relevant when the goals or races are in a places different to where we normally train, it is important to have sessions that simulate the concrete characteristics of the race/goal. That should be in a training camp or in the long runs. Specificity can be relevant when:

o   Climate can be extreme: altitude, temperature, humidity

o   Terrain is difficult: very rocky, technical, muddy.

o   Time of the day : many ultras take place at night, and that has to be train, as the feeling of run is very different, and it demands more to the feet.

o   Length: the longer the race the longer the long run. But be aware that is not proportionally longer, since even for 24 hours events a 4-6 hours session should do the job. As said before, make sure the recovery time is not too long (from 24 to few days depending on the session).

o   Pace: even if the race will be very slow ( as in a 100k) or very fast 5k, we need to train at the paces of the event. Make sure you are not anxious running at zone 1-2, which is the zone you should run an ultra, or zone 4 for a very short race.

o   Logistics: material, aid stations and transitions should be trained. Learn how to run with the mandatory equipment and make sure you optimize it through practice.

o   Nutrition: during a race or a long challenge you will be eating things you may normally do not : bars, lot of sweets, isotonic, cola… make sure you find what works for you, and make sure you are having the required amounts of carbs, salts, water and amino acids per hour to keep performing.

·         Flexibility: running, even on very uneven terrain, will make you stiff, specially the more stressed or unbalanced you are. In any case, regular black rolling, stretching, yoga and other exercises will reduce your chances of injury and improve your mobility.

For many, it is obvious, for some, all new…but I am pretty sure you are not following all the principles, and we can agree that almost all apply to you. Keep in mind that we are here for the long run, enjoying the process and targeting goals and challenges to have concrete checkpoints in our path. Prioritizing long term development and health, while having a consistency mix of hard and easy effort will lead to improvement, which is why training is so rewarding. Never forget to play, and please tell me your thoughts about this post!