Notes from the coach.

Treadmill incline work can build climbing-specific aerobic fitness, muscular endurance, and hiking economy for ultrarunners, but it cannot fully replace real mountain terrain. Here is what transfers, what does not, and how to use it well.

The minimum training for a 100 mile race is not one magic long run. For most ultrarunners, the true floor is enough weekly volume, enough time on feet, and enough durability to keep moving after many hours, without arriving injured or too cooked to absorb the final block.

Trail running base training is the phase where ultrarunners build the aerobic and mechanical foundation that lets later workouts actually work. This guide explains the physiology behind base training, what adaptations come first, what it does not solve on its own, and how to apply it in real training.

A bad race can tempt ultrarunners to change everything at once. This guide helps you sort normal post-race emotion from useful training signals, identify what actually went wrong, and decide what to do over the next few days and weeks.

A single ugly session can make an ultrarunner question the whole training block. This guide explains how to tell the difference between normal day-to-day variability and a real fitness problem, then shows what to do over the next few days.

A few days of illness can leave an ultrarunner unsure whether to jump back into the plan, repeat the week, or start over. This guide explains how to use symptoms, recovery signals, and recent training context to decide what to do next without turning one setback into a longer interruption.

Training load tells you how much work you have done. Readiness asks how prepared you are to absorb the next bout of work. For ultrarunners, confusing the two leads to bad decisions, especially when fatigue is local, life stress is high, or recovery signals disagree.

A long run that unravels can mean poor pacing, underfueling, heat strain, accumulated fatigue, or simply a bad day. This guide helps ultrarunners sort the signals, identify the most likely cause, and decide how to adjust the next few days of training without overreacting.

Muscular endurance helps explain why an ultrarunner can have solid aerobic fitness yet still fade on long climbs, steep grades, or late-race hiking. This article explains what muscular endurance is, how it differs from aerobic capacity, what is happening in the muscles, and how to train it without confusing it with general fitness.

High life stress changes how much training you can absorb, even when your legs still look fine on paper. This guide helps ultrarunners decide when to keep the plan, when to reduce intensity, and how to protect fitness during demanding weeks.

Lactate threshold is one of the most useful and most misunderstood ideas in endurance training. For ultrarunners, it helps explain why some efforts feel sustainably hard while others turn costly fast, and how to train the line between them.

Knowing when to stop a session early is a training skill, not a lack of toughness. This guide helps ultrarunners tell the difference between normal discomfort, a bad but harmless day, and the situations where cutting a workout short is the smartest call.

Running economy is the energy cost of holding a given pace. For ultrarunners, it helps explain why one athlete can move comfortably for hours while another burns through effort at the same speed. This article explains what running economy is, what affects it, how training changes it, and how to apply it in long-distance training.

Under-recovery rarely shows up as one dramatic signal. It usually appears as a pattern across pace, heart rate, perceived effort, sleep, and how repeatable your normal training feels. Here is how ultrarunners can read that pattern and decide whether to push, hold steady, or back off.

Ultrarunners rely on both carbohydrate and fat, but not in equal amounts at every intensity. This article explains glycogen depletion, fat oxidation, why runners bonk, and what training and fueling actually change.

Recovery between heavy weeks is not about doing nothing. It is about shedding enough fatigue to absorb the work you already did, protect the next block, and keep training moving forward. This guide explains what recovery actually means for endurance athletes, which signals matter, and how to structure down weeks without losing momentum.

Muscle soreness is common in ultramarathon training, especially after hills, long descents, strength work, or a new block. The important question is not whether you feel sore, but whether that soreness fits normal training damage or points to something that needs a change in plan.

Zone 2 training is often reduced to a heart rate range, but the real value is physiological. This article explains what Zone 2 actually means, how it relates to lactate and ventilatory thresholds, what adaptations it drives, and how ultrarunners can use it without turning every easy run into a lab test.

Plan structured workouts, mark Rest Days, and keep the original prescription beside the completed activity and Coach evaluation.

The repeated bout effect helps explain why the first hard downhill run of a training block can leave your quads wrecked, while the next similar session feels much more manageable. This article explains the physiology behind that protection, how long it lasts, and how ultrarunners can use it without digging too deep.

Critical speed is one of the clearest ways to think about endurance intensity, but many runners only hear about it in lab-style terms. This article explains what critical speed actually represents, why it matters for trail and ultra training, where it breaks down, and how runners can apply it without pretending every race happens on a track.

A slower easy pace does not automatically mean your fitness is fading. For ultrarunners, it is often a signal about heat, fatigue, fueling, stress, terrain, or recovery status. This post shows how to read the signs, sort likely causes, and decide whether to keep training, adjust the week, or back off.

Heat acclimation is more than getting used to feeling hot. It changes plasma volume, sweating, skin blood flow, and how hard a given pace feels. For ultrarunners, those adaptations matter in hot races, but they can also improve tolerance for long steady work in any conditions. This article explains the physiology and how to apply it in training.

Cardiac drift explains why heart rate often rises during a steady run even when pace does not change. For ultrarunners, understanding the mechanism matters because it changes how you pace long runs, interpret heart rate data, and train for heat, fueling, and durability.

Three missed training days rarely cost meaningful fitness, but the wrong comeback can turn a small interruption into a bigger setback. Here is how ultrarunners can decide whether to resume the plan, shift key sessions, or scale back for a few days.

Fatigue resistance, also called durability, is the ability to maintain pace, power, and coordination as the hours add up. This post explains the physiology behind late-race fade and how training changes it.

Most of us train hard and train alone, with no one really watching. Train Ultra is the coach I wish I had had: it reads every workout you record, remembers your goals, and is there to talk it through.