Mentored thread for Conn Ultra training

I'd be up for this if it happened.

No better mentor on this thread than the man... Mick Rice. I'll pop him a PM to see if he's interested.

There is nothing special about ultras that requires magical mentoring. There just races, like half marathons, marathons etc, only longer. scale up your training runs a bit, and run the races a relatively slow pace.

In my experience no amount of mentoring/coaching can get anywhere near the amount you will learn by simply getting out there and doing the runs. Don't use your first ultra as a big make or break target. Use it as a learning exercise and put your experience to use on your subsequent one. Make that one your main "target" race.

Beware of falling for the "progression" trap. Just because 50km, or 39.3 miles isnt too far beyond the marathon doesn't mean that they'll be the easiest ones to do, or the best ones to experiment with fo ultrarunning. Some people (quite a lot in the ultra world) would find these much harder to do than, say, a 24 hour race, as they are so "short and fast" in comparison.

Its no more necessary to build up through ultra distances (50km.. 100km .. 24 hours etc) than it is necessary to build up to a marathon by starting to race 100metres and building up through the distances until your finally "ready" to run a marathon. Indeed, if you were a natural marathoner then trying to train fo and compete at sprints would probably only convince you that running wasn't your thing.

A real world example of that would be Tony Mangan, who is a legendary Irish ultrarunner. His marathon PB isn't particularly impressive. Even his 100km pb isn't all that spectacular. However only 2 Irish men have managed to run further than him over 24hours, and he holds world records at 48 hours.

So just pick a race you'd like to do, and don't be afraid to go much longer than you've done before.

I'd be prepared to offer some guidance here. I'm not sure that I'll be on the thread every day, as my time is a little limited by circumstances at the moment. I'm also not the world's leading expert on ultras by any stretch but I hope I'd be able to offer basic advice and reasurance.

What I'd suggest for anyone who's aiming for the Connemara Ultra race is that they set out very briefly what they've done at longer distances over the last couple of years, what their current traing is like and what their ambitions for the race are.

I'm very conscious that there's a limit to what can be done on a thread like this but I suppose that shouldn't stop us trying to help each other.

sarsfieldsrock wrote: »

Does anybody have any insights on the value of back to back long runs as training for an Ultra?

The Hal Higdon comrades plan places a lot of store on back to back long runs of up to 4 and 5 hours as part of the training. I did it for my first Conn Ultra in '08 but probably didn't do enough of them. ie I did two weekends of them (24 and 30 miles) 4 weeks out from the Ultra.

Judging from my training for Connemara and Dingle this year, I would be wary to do too many back-to-back runs.

For Connemara I trained like a marathon runner but with longer long runs (the longest being 1x30 miles, 1x26.6 miles, 1x25 miles). During the race I felt very comfortable cruising along at 8:00 pace. I fact, I had to hold myself back to run that pace over the first third.

For Dingle I did training that would have been much closer to Hal Higdon's ultra plan, including 7 runs of at least marathon distance over 5 weeks, including a weekend of 32/27 miles and another of 30/26.5 miles, all over very hill territory, up to half of it on Kerry mountain trails.

In theory I should have been much better prepared for an ultra, in reality my "cruising" pace over the first 10 miles was closer to 8:20 and in hindsight even that was a little bit too fast. I also ran the first 39 miles in Dingle in about 5:45, which is half an hour slower than Connemara. I know Dingle featured Conor Pass during those miles and obviously I had to keep enough in store for the final 11 miles, but fact is that I felt more comfortable running a faster pace in Connemara than a slower one in Dingle.

Then again, to find out which works better for you the only thing is to try both and experience the results.

Ill be doing conn ultra next year. Target at the moment is 6 hours.

I started running from scratch in April 08.
1st marathon April 09 followed by three more that year.
7 marathon this year and a 50k and the 24 hour ( 137km)
The longer the better as I am quite slow but love being out there for ages.

Am down for Comrades next May and will be doing Connemara Ultra as a training run. Am nervous about this especially as not many hills were I live. Will follow the New Zealand Ultra runners 100k training programme.

In training for the 50k I did 10/10 or 26/10 milers every alternate weekend for about 8-10 weeks. I would like to try occasional long runs 5-7 hours rather than back to backs all the time as I think there is too much recovery time between them to be able to manage the leap to major hours on the feet on the day.

It’s great to see so many enthusiastic potential Conne Ultra people for 2011. It really is a special race in a special place and a great place to test the ultra waters. We also seem to have quite a few other experienced ultra-heads with Magnet and TFB contributing. Between us, I think we can help anyone who's contemplating this race to get over any unnecessary worries or anxieties. The necessary ones they’ll have to work on themselves :-) As well as having run quite a few ultras at different distances between us, we’ve also got a good deal of experience out on the course and, in Connemara at least, that counts for a lot.

When I started running ultras and casting around for guidance, one of the things that struck me most was the dearth of decent advice. The people who were actively engaged in the sport tended not to take the time to coach or advise. The advice that I did to find was useful to some degree, but often only covered broad principles and sometimes boiled down to ‘set off slowly and taper off from there’, which wasn’t what I was really looking for.

One obvious thing to say is that there are no ‘one-size-fits-all’ programmes for training for an ultra. Even ‘baby’ ultras like Connemara present an individual challenge for each and every starter. In deciding how best to train for a race like this you have to stop, look around yourself and consider what will suit your own needs and capabilities best, rather than how best you can adapt to somebody else’s training programme.

Having said that there are of course broad principles that will apply to everyone. The foundation of every ultra-marathon training regime will be miles. Quite how many miles, and in what configuration is where the individualization begins. What each of us need to work out is how best to cover as many training miles as we’re able while still enjoying the process. I’ve never liked or advocated prescriptive training plans because they’re so often counter productive. When people deviate from a set plan they often consider that they’ve failed and so lose heart. If we start from the point of view that we’ll do our best, given the hand that we’ve been dealt, there’s a much better chance that we’ll feel good about our training. Given that I would assume none of us are going to break world records, or claim gold medals in London in 2012, the most important is that we enjoy and are satisfied with the running we do, therefore it follows that anything we can do to help our selves enjoy the process is a good thing.

What I’ll do over the next few days is to look more closely at the individuals who’ve contributed to the thread and then come back with something a bit more specific. In some cases I’ll use PMs and more often I’ll post here directly. For the moment I think the best thing that anyone who is training with the Connemara Ultra in the back of their mind could do is to start working out, and putting into practice, how they can comfortably build mileage.

More soon.