Notes from the coach.

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.

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

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 post to Strava, remembers your goals, and is there to talk it through.