Training Strategies for Huge Vert

As an Ultrarunner, I find it very interesting that there aren’t more good resources out there for how to train for races with hills or mountains. After all, a lot of people get into ultras so they can experience running in amazing places like mountains and canyons. Before I got into ultrarunning I had run marathons and triathlons, all of which were run on relatively flat roads. My first Ultra was the Farmdale Trail 50 miler in western Illinois. There was no information on the race website about there being hills and I just figured that being in Illinois it would be pancake flat like everything else. I WAS WRONG! By most standards the elevation gain in that race was not much at all. I think it was about 7,000’ over the 50 mile course (140’/mile). I’d call this pretty average for an ultramarathon but at the time I felt completely overwhelmed by all the climbing. This was my first wakeup call that all races are not created equally and that this ultrarunning thing was a different beast entirely. My days of going out and expecting to tick off 7:30/miles in a race was long gone. Now I needed to train for hills. That was quite a few years ago and now I pride myself on being a strong climber who comes from the Flatlands. This year I’ve got a few races that will really test my training strategy and will undoubtedly force me to make some adjustments (especially Ouray 100 with over 40,000’ of gain). What I have compiled here is a guide for injecting a little vert into your training so that you’re better prepared for your next ultra adventure.

Ascending

When I first started digging into training for vert I had to come up with a good way to evaluate elevation gain to put things into perspective. The metric that I like the most is vertical feet/mile (Vft/mi). When you start to evaluate races based on Vft/mi, not only can you gauge race difficulty much better but it sheds light on how to train for those races. There are some races out there with almost 0 Vft/mi (Hennepin 100) and others with a massive 400+ Vft/mi (Ouray 100). Distance isn’t everything either. There are plenty of 50Ks with massive vert as well like Old Gabe with over 300 Vft/mi. This first section will focus specifically on training for the Ascending portion of these races.

Training Plan

When developing the training plans for Ultra App I wanted to make sure that the plans included elevation gain. This is something that I hadn’t seen in any other training plans and I think is extremely valuable. I won’t go into all the details (proprietary design stuff and all) but basically the app looks at the elevation gain for your race and converts it to Vft/mi. This is the goal that you want to be able to work up to in training. Vft/mi is initially broken down into weeks and then into the individual training days. For the training weeks, there is a gradual buildup from week 1 to the Big Week (somewhere about 6-8 weeks before the race) where Vft/mi increases from what you are currently running to what the race has. As an example, let’s say that you are running Old Gabe (50K with 10,000’ elevation gain) and you are starting from scratch coming from the Off Season. Your elevation gain will increase from 0 to 320 Vft/mi each week until it peaks at Week 10. Not only will the Vft/mi increase each week, but your total distance will increase as you work your way through Base and Build which means the total elevation gain per week increases incrementally. This is really the best way to prepare your body for all the climbing that you’ll encounter on race day. Unless you are used to spending a lot of time training on an incline it will be very difficult to judge effort and pace during the race.

My training plan starting 4-Jan.

The entire weeks are easy to plot out on the training plan, nice linear progression to build up to the desired Vft/mi. Where the real difficulty lies is in planning the individual days in that week. It took a lot of testing and trials to get this just the way I wanted in the Ultra App. I will not go into detail on how the training days are differentiated in the plan but will say that Vft/mi is not the same for each day. My initial attempt at adding elevation gain to the plan had and equal amount of Vft/mi for each day of the week. I quickly found out that this would not work and had to make some major adjustments. The elevation gain for each session is now specifically chosen for each day based on the primary purpose of each session. An example would be higher intensity sessions will have higher Vft/mi than a recovery session.

Running

These are the views we all love on race day!

This section might seem a little strange, after all we are ultrarunners. I have found that many of you don’t really have the best guidance on how to actually get those vertical miles done. The biggest question that you have to ask yourself is whether or not you can accomplish what the training plan is asking outside or if you need to utilize the treadmill. If you are running a race in Colorado or California with >200 Vft/mi and you live in Florida, you need to use a treadmill. It is VERY difficult to simulate vert if you live in a place that is relatively flat. It is difficult even if you live in a place with a lot of hills and mountains. The problem is that even hilly routes might have some incline but they also have an equal amount of decline (we’ll get to that later). This means that in order to get in 200 Vft/mi during a training session you have to find a really steep hill and run up and down a bunch of times. This might be appropriate for a few sessions during the year but probably not for all of them. The benefit of running on a treadmill for these vert sessions is that there is no downhill. This essentially means you are climbing the entire time. It is much easier to get 2000’ of elevation gain during a 5 mile run on a treadmill than trying to find a mountain close by (when there are no mountains) to achieve that sort of session.

I know we all hate the treadmill but it is a very useful tool to the ultrarunner. If you stick to your HR zones for each training session you will probably find that at the beginning of your season you will have to walk a good portion of the vert sessions. I prefer to split up these session and do 1/2 of the session at a high incline on the treadmill and the other 1/2 running outside on the flat trails. Once you get further into the training season you can concentrate on doing the higher intensity runs on an incline treadmill and the long runs outside on the trails. In order to figure out how much vertical gain you get on a treadmill, here’s a very useful calculation that lets you know what %incline to set your treadmill to achieve the desired amount of climbing in a known distance: 5,280 x Distance (miles) x % incline. Here’s an example, my training plan for today has a 4.5 mile run with 1850’ of climbing. I simply plug in 5,280 x 4.5 in my calculator and get 23,760. Then I just multiply that number by a reasonable % for incline until I get pretty close. If you take 23,760 x 0.08 you get 1,900. That’s pretty darn close to my goal of 1,850 so I know that I need to set my treadmill to 8% incline for the 4.5 mile run. By the way, this is the exact calculation that the app uses to measure your incline while running on the treadmill (notice it asks you to input the speed and incline before you start). One other note while we are talking about treadmills. If you are a Flatlander like myself and truly love to race in the mountains you should seriously consider investing in a NordicTrack Incline Treadmill. Even the least expensive model (which is what I have) can go 12 mph and has 40% incline. You may never use the full 40% incline but there are plenty of races out there with long stretches of 20%+ inclines so you better get comfortable with what that feels like. One of my favorite sessions is 20% incline power hike with a weight vest.

Get out and run in the mountains if you can

One other important thing to note in this section is that I find it very helpful to gain some experience with the actual terrain that you will be racing in. The vertical sessions are slightly less important than the descending sessions because of the speed factor but it is helpful to get out and do some incline sessions on hills/mountains so that you understand the differences in footing, what muscles to activate, etc.

Strength Training

No, this is not me

I’ve found a tremendous benefit from strength training when it comes to elevation gain in races. When I first started out as an ultrarunner (and didn’t do as much strength training as I currently do) I found that my legs just felt weak and rubbery as I got further into a race. Nowhere was this more evident than in long climbs. After I started to inject a little more strength training into my running season I quickly noticed that my legs felt strong even late in 100 mile races. I started to notice that I was able to run up hills where everyone else was walking. As a Flatlander, I need as much help as I can possibly find for all of my vertical adventures and strength training has provided an incredible boost. Because of these benefits I make sure to include at least 2-3 days per week throughout the year of strength training. If you haven’t read the blog on strength training I’ll give you a quick summary of what I think is most important and the specific benefits for vert training.

Very simply, I define strength training as lifting heavy things for few reps. I DO NOT call doing 500 body weight squats strength training. A typical strength training session for me would be either deadlifts or squats for 3-5 sets of 3-8 reps with the maximum weight that can be lifted with good form. It is not uncommon for me to deadlift 275 pounds for 3 reps during one of these sessions. Endurance type weight training for your legs is useless for ultrarunners (upper body endurance work is beneficial though). Endurance type weight training consists of performing a lot of reps with light weight. You already get enough endurance training when you run, don’t waste your time in the gym with this.

Strength specific training has 2 major benefits to the ultrarunner. The first is the neuromuscular benefits. Many people think that you only get stronger if your muscles increase in size. That is false. Most strength increases come from coordinating your muscle fibers to fire more in unison with each other. This coordination comes from your motor neurons and mostly affects your type 2 muscle fibers (strength). The outcome of this coordinated firing is the ability to produce power/strength more efficiently and with less effort. It can also decrease the load that your type 1 muscle fibers (endurance) experience in the long term which explains why my legs feel fresher later in races. The second main benefit is durability. I talk about durability extensively in previous posts but it is basically the ability of your soft tissue (muscles, tendons, ligaments) to endure punishment. When you run a hilly ultra, your legs go through some serious punishment. Lifting heavy things allows these soft tissues to endure more punishment without breaking down and causing injury (muscle strains/tears, sprains, tendonitis, etc.). Heavy load bearing exercise has been shown to thicken up tendons and creates a more stable structure for your legs. I would argue that the vast majority of ultrarunners would decrease their overall times if they were more durable and could continue to run strong much further into a race even more so than being more aerobically fit.

Poles

I want to start out by saying that I am not an expert in the use of trekking poles. I do, however, know that their use in long races with a lot of vert can be extremely helpful. I mention poles in this article because they are like so many other things in the Ultra world…you never want to use them for the first time on race day. Incorporate poles into your training so that you get the feel for how to use them. There is definitely some getting used to being able to deploy them quickly and understanding where they should contact the ground to be most beneficial. Your poles should not touch the ground in front of where your feet are. In order to get forward propulsion from the poles, they must land next to your feet and you should be driving them backward with your upper body. If you get proficient at using poles for climbing you can expect to see a 5-10% decrease in overall output from your legs during the climbs (maybe more if you’re really good). This might not seem like a lot but it can be a game changer on really long races with high Vft/mi.

I have not seen much benefit of using poles on the flat portions of a race (unless it’s 200+ miles) but there could be some additional benefit while descending. If you like to fly down the hills like I do then you can use the poles to help balance while bombing down huge descents.

Descending

Opening up that stride

The discussion around Ascending has included a lot of specific training strategies that are based in science and have some 1st hand experience to back them up. This section on Descending will focus more on the art than the science. There are certain items that were mentioned in the Ascending section that will also help here (i.e. strength training for durability) but I have found that there are not a lot of really good ways to get better at descending other than just doing it. There are some runners who are really good at descending and can absolutely fly down a very technical trail while others just can’t seem to “get it” and end up going down hills about as slow as they go up. I’ll give a few tips to try and improve your descending but at the end of the day you’ll have to just figure out what works best for you.

Opening the Hips

One problem with ultrarunning is that we spend most of the time taking short strides. This makes it very difficult to open the hips and get much bigger strides in when it helps the most…going downhill. If you stick with the short quick strides that you use during the rest of the race, you will go the same speed downhill as on the flats and there will be more pounding on your body. If you descend properly your strides will be much longer (not landing way out in front of you but extending further behind) which will allow you to cover much more ground per stride. Many ultrarunners lament the downhill because they are painful and beat the daylights out of their quads. I surmise this is because they are doing it all wrong. The downhills should be much faster and easier on your body than the uphills and flats. I think where it all goes wrong is with the hips and the lean.

Body Lean

Everywhere else in the race you will see runners with a slightly forward lean…except the downhills. I see a huge portion of runners who have a backward lean while going down hills. They are purposely braking while going down to keep at a slow pace. I’m not sure why this is other than they are not confident enough to accelerate down the hill. Going downhill allows the runner to take advantage of “free” energy in the form of gravity. You literally do not have to propel yourself forward at all. You simply need to have a slight forward lean and just keep your feet moving. This takes some practice to build confidence that you won’t wipe out from going too fast and knowing how and where to place your feet. I find bombing down huge hills to be the most exciting part of any ultra. My highlight to the point of this writing was flying down the South Kaibab trail in the Grand Canyon. It took just under an hour to get the 7 miles (and 5,000’) down the twisty turn-style trail to the canyon floor. I definitely had the brakes on for portions of that descent but it was amazing. There is one caveat to this section. There are certainly some sections of trails that are too steep to bomb down and you must have a backward lean to keep from rolling down the mountain. You have to get out and experiment to see what your limit is when it comes to bombing down the hills.

Confidence

This last one is something that just comes with repetition and learning from failure. The bad part about failure is that many times, when descending, that means injury. Tripping and falling, turning an ankle, and scraping a knee or arm are all part of the journey. If you really want to fly down the hills you just have to be confident enough to try it. If you are not confident, I would start out with something easier, like running down a paved street that has a good downhill section. You can get the feel of opening your hips and test the forward lean to see how much is just right for you. This will allow you to gain some confidence without having to also worry about tripping on a rock or root and crashing. Once you build some confidence on a flat surface, then you should mix in some trails that aren’t very technical. And finally, you will want to practice some on technical trails to hone your skills and understand foot placement and balance.

I am not a fast runner. This is probably why I gravitate to the really long and really hard races. On a flat course I will get outrun by just about everybody. After utilizing the training techniques that I’ve outlined here over the past several years I am much more comfortable and confident that I can climb the ascents and bomb down the descents as well as just about anyone in the race (non-Elites of course). In 2021 I plan to put these training techniques to the test with races at Cruel Jewel (17,000’ gain for 50 miles), Old Gabe (10,000’ gain for 50K), Ouray (42,000’ gain for 100 miles), and Tahoe 200 (40,000’ gain for 200 miles). After this racing season which will see the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest 3.75 times I’m sure I’ll learn some more and write a follow-up to this post. Until then, Happy Climbing!