How do you really know if the training that you are doing is helping you to improve as an athlete? The answer is data.

Think of the durability of a diesel truck that just keeps on going no matter how rough you treat it. BTB long runs are quite possibly the best way to really build durability during your training plan.

They put a major focus on Recovery instead of just massive volume. They found that injury rates went way down, runners were getting to the start line healthy and fresh, and many athletes performed much better.

This was my first wakeup call that all races are not created equally and that this ultrarunning thing was a different beast entirely.

Ultramarathon - a footrace in which the participants must push their physical, emotional, and psychological limits beyond that which most consider possible. An ultimate test of endurance for both the mind and body. The pinnacle of human achievement in endurance running.

What I have found to be most beneficial as a low carb athlete (in both myself and athletes I’ve trained) is the drastic reduction in required calorie intake during races, bonk resistance, and the ability to maintain lean body mass.

Strength specific training has not shown to increase VO2max, however, the more interesting (and perhaps more important) finding is the increase in running economy.

There is a lot of nuance to training. It is a very complex dance of pushing human performance just far enough to elicit a physiological response but not too far so that the body cannot adequately recover.

Just bearing witness to his tenacity drastically increases my ability to suffer. How can I stop running when he never did.

At this point, everything becomes a blur. The instructors yelling through the bullhorn, the constant cold and wet, the sleep deprivation, the extreme exhaustion from redlining for the past 24 hours.

Some gigantopithecus dressed as an ultrarunner carried a 95 pound boulder up that damn cliff!