Crafting your Personalised Ultra Marathon Training Plan
Ready to design your own ultra training? This article helps you craft a personalised plan that adapts to your life while targeting your race day demands.
For many ultra runners juggling full-time jobs, families, and unpredictable daily lives, the idea of "perfect" training is a myth. Notwithstanding the best of intentions, life always finds a way to disrupt even the best laid out plans. However, that shouldn’t stop you from having a plan when training for your goal event.
Crafting a personalised training plan might seem like a daunting task; a balance between periodisation, mileage, and intensity. While the value of a professional coach is undeniable, the good news is you can build a highly effective and flexible training plan yourself. This article explains the principles behind crafting a personalised training plan with a focus on what matters the most. This should hopefully enable you to construct an effective yet flexible plan providing a successful path to your next finish line.
At the end of the article I provide a link to a sample plan so you can see how the principles explained within this article can be used to create a practical training plan.
Optimizing Your Effort
Before we dive into the details of scheduling, it's crucial to establish a core philosophy that underpins any effective self-coached ultrarunning plan.
In the pursuit of optimal performance, it's easy to get lost in the details. However, the Pareto Principle, often known as the 80/20 rule, offers a powerful perspective: roughly 80% of your desired results can be achieved with 20% of the effort, while the remaining 20% of improvement requires 80% of the effort.
For self-coached ultra runners, this translates directly into a philosophy of "good, not perfect." The goal of a "perfect" training plan is strong, but the reality of life often intervenes. My experience has consistently shown that good training performed consistently yields superior results compared to "perfect" training executed inconsistently.
This means focusing on the fundamental, high-impact elements of your training, such as key workouts, consistent weekly volume and strategic recovery. Embracing "good enough" fosters an adaptive mindset, crucial for long-term progress and injury prevention. You'll avoid burnout from chasing flawless execution, ensuring you reach the start line healthy and prepared, having consistently put in effort.
Understanding The Demands
Your ultra running training plan starts with an understanding of your goal event. A generic plan pulled from a book or website won’t account for the nuances of your event. What are you training for? Distance is not the only factor you should consider. In addition, make sure you consider the following factors:
Course Profile: Are there relentless climbs, technical descents and rolling hills, or is the course flat and fast? Research elevation gain, terrain type (rocky, smooth trail, road sections), and technical sections.
Expected Duration: How long do you anticipate being on your feet? This influences nutrition, hydration, and mental preparation.
Environmental Factors: Will you be running in extreme heat, cold, high humidity, or significant altitude? Will you need to navigate through the night?
Logistics & Support: What are the aid station intervals? Is crew access available? How will this impact your nutrition and gear strategy?
I've previously discussed the Demands-Resources model, a structured process to analyse your event's requirements and identify the skills and tools you need to develop. Dedicate 30 minutes to an hour to this step since the insights gained here will directly inform your training. A lack of focus may result in a waste of precious training time.
Planning the Unmovables
Even the most meticulously planned training schedule will buckle under the weight of unforeseen life events if not properly accounted for. Unlike professional athletes, most ultra runners juggle full-time jobs, family responsibilities, and social commitments. These are not obstacles to be ignored but realities to be incorporated into your plan.
Before you even think about mileage or workouts, pull out your calendar and map out your "unmovables." These are the non-negotiable commitments that will impact your training. Think about:
Weddings or significant gatherings
Planned work travel or demanding project deadlines
Family vacations or personal appointments
Actionable Tip: Mark these dates clearly on your training calendar early in the planning process. While it might be tempting to squeeze in a workout during these busy periods, I strongly advise erring on the side of caution and under-plan your training during these times. Taking extra rest is almost always more beneficial than trying to cram in a session on top of an already high-stress situation.
Conversely, this is also the ideal time to strategically place longer-term, high-impact training blocks, such as a multi-day training camp. These can offer significant fitness boosts, but they require careful integration to prevent overtraining or injury. Plan these interventions well in advance to ensure they complement your overall training progression.
The Building Blocks - Mesocycle Planning
With your race demands understood and life's unmovables mapped, it's time to structure your training into meaningful blocks. Training is not a linear progression; it benefits immensely from periodisation, where you focus on different physiological adaptations at different times. These multi-week blocks are known as mesocycles.
The guiding principle of periodisation is to move from least specific to most specific training as you get closer to your race. This means that foundational work occurs further out, while race-specific preparation guides the weeks preceding your event.
Roughly speaking, your mesocycle blocks will be the following:
High Intensity (least specific for long ultras):
Focus: Improving speed and efficiency at high intensities.
Typical Workout: Multiple 3-5 minute high-intensity repetitions with similar rest.
Workout Frequency: 2-4 sessions a week.
Weekly Volume: Low due to the demanding nature of the workouts.
Duration: Adaptation is quick, so dedicate up to 4 weeks within a training cycle.
Medium Intensity:
Focus: Effort just below your lactate threshold improving your strength and efficiency over longer efforts.
Workout examples: One or more longer repetitions (8-20 minutes) at a controlled intensity, with 50% recovery time. Can be integrated into longer runs.
Workout Frequency: 2-4 times a week (including easy runs).
Weekly Volume: Medium, allowing you to absorb the intensity.
Duration: 3-6 weeks.
Volume (most specific for long ultras):
Focus: Increasing consistent running mileage and improving durability.
Workout examples: Longer, easy-paced runs; occasional back-to-back long runs. Limited intensity work.
Weekly Volume: High, but at a manageable effort.
Duration: Typically 5-10 weeks (excluding intermittent recovery weeks), depending on your training history. This is often the longest phase.
Recovery:
Focus: Allowing the body to adapt and recover from training stress. Essential for preventing overtraining and injury.
Typical Workout: Easy Zone 1/2 recovery runs or complete rest.
Weekly Volume: Between 40% and 70% of the surrounding weekly volume.
Duration: 1-2 consecutive weeks, usually after 2-5 weeks of build-up.
Taper:
Focus: Ensure freshness and peak performance on race day.
Typical Workout: Similar intensity and frequency as previous weeks with a sharp reduction in duration.
Weekly Volume: 50% reduction in first week, 60% in second
Duration: Typically 2 weeks, but can vary (1-3 weeks) depending on the race and individual.
Actionable Tip: With your race date and unmovables on the calendar, begin mapping out these mesocycles. Work backward from race day, allocating appropriate duration to your taper and specific phases. This provides a high-level roadmap for your entire training block.
Microcycle Planning - Defining Your Weekly Focus
A microcycle, typically a 5-10 day block (most commonly a 7-day week), is the smallest unit of your training. This is where you translate your mesocycle goals into concrete weekly actions.
Within each microcycle, you need to define three things:
Overall (Weekly) Volume: How many hours will you aim for this week? This should naturally align with your mesocycle phase.
Key Workouts: Identify 2 to 4 crucial sessions that drive the focus of each mesocycle. These will drive the most adaptation, and should account for 50-70% of your total weekly volume. These are the workouts you must prioritise.
Additional Key Workout Conditions: This is where you integrate race specificity (more on this in a bit).
There's no single "magic" distribution of workouts throughout the week; it depends on your individual recovery, schedule, and training goals. Don't be afraid to schedule back-to-back workouts (high intensity or high volume), but ensure they fit within a larger structure that allows for adequate recovery. Use the typical workout examples from the mesocycle section as inspiration, but feel free to introduce variation (e.g., different climb durations for intervals, pyramid sessions etc.).
Incorporating Race Specificity
Crucially, keep the demands of your goal event at the forefront. Many of your key workouts need to have specific conditions that mimic race day. This means:
Terrain & Gradient: Seek out trails with similar technicality and elevation profiles.
Altitude & Climate: If applicable, train at similar altitude and climatic conditions.
Time of Day: Practice running during the anticipated race hours, especially if it involves night running.
Gear & Nutrition: Use your race-day gear (pack, shoes, poles, headlamp) and practice your nutrition and hydration strategies during these sessions.
Mental Skills: Use specific sessions to practice mental resilience, problem-solving and positive self-talk.
The extent to which you focus on these race-specific conditions depends on your current "toolbox" as identified in the "Understanding the Demands" step. In practice this means that if you're confident in your night gear you may skip night runs and focus on heat acclimatisation instead.
The Flexibility Advantage
With your key workouts defined, the final step in building your plan is to round out the week. You've likely accounted for 50-70% of your weekly volume with your key sessions; this final step fills out another 10-30%, bringing you to 80-90% of your target weekly volume.
It might seem counter-intuitive to leave 10-20% of your weekly volume unplanned, but for most amateur ultra runners this provides invaluable flexibility. Ideally, we do not want to leave precious training time on the table, so you should still try to aim for your weekly volume. Instead, this buffer allows for the following:
Adequate Recovery: Allowing for spontaneous rest days or easier recovery runs when your body signals fatigue.
Life Integration: Providing buffer time to shift workouts if additional unexpected life events crop up.
Avoiding Overwhelm: Preventing the pressure of a fully booked schedule, which can lead to demotivation if sessions are missed.
Remember the "good, not perfect" philosophy. If life intervenes and you only manage your key workouts, that's okay; you're still making significant progress towards your goal, maintaining consistency where it matters most.
Navigating the Unexpected
Designing your training plan is a great first step, but the reality of implementation rarely unfolds exactly as planned. Life happens, fatigue sets in, and training needs to be adapted. Here are three tips to navigate the inevitable challenges and keep your plan on track.
1. Don't Look Back, Fix Forward
Mike Tyson famously said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." In a training context, getting "punched in the face" means an injury, illness, or a significant life event that derails your schedule.
When this happens, your most productive response is to not dwell on what you've lost, but to take stock of your current fitness and schedule, and determine how to move forward. If dropping a full mesocycle or adjusting your race goal becomes necessary, embrace it. Trying to cram missed training into future weeks is a recipe for disaster, almost guaranteeing overtraining, injury, or burnout before the start line.
2. The Two-Week Rolling Plan
While defining your entire training block's weekly volume in advance is a good strategic overview, some athletes find immense benefit in a more agile approach to microcycle planning. Instead of fully detailing every workout for the entire block, consider working in two-week increments. This means you would:
Define your mesocycles for the entire plan.
Fully plan the weekly volume and specific workouts for the two forthcoming weeks.
At the end of the current week (or beginning of the next), assess your current fitness, fatigue, and life schedule, then plan the subsequent week.
This method allows you to be highly responsive to your body's signals and life's demands. You're not bound by a plan written weeks or months ago which might no longer be appropriate.
However, this approach requires a consistent time commitment each week to review and plan, which might be a bridge too far for some busy athletes. Evaluate if this level of weekly engagement is feasible for you.
3. Strategic Cross-Training
Some ultra runners are purists, while others enjoy integrating different sports into their routine, especially if it involves time with friends. While I am not opposed to cross-training, its role in your plan needs to evolve as you approach your race.
Specificity is key as you get closer to your event. The closer to race day, the higher the ratio of running to other sports should be. The primary aspect of specificity is the movement pattern itself – running.
Additionally, the closer to your event, the more important it is to nail your key workout. Do not try to substitute key running workouts with cross training, especially close to the goal event, and if you substitute a run with a cross-training session (e.g., replacing a 1-hour easy run with a 1.5-hour bike ride), ensure the cross-training adheres to the original workout's goal. If the run was meant to be easy, your cross-training should be equally easy, if not easier, in terms of effort. Avoid turning an easy cross-training session into a high-intensity effort that adds undue fatigue.
An Evolving Ultra Plan
Your training plan is a living document, a personalised strategy designed to evolve during your training. By understanding the principles within this article you gain the knowledge to elevate your performance through a carefully curated plan. The tips for implementation will help you navigate the inevitable challenges, ensuring that your plan remains a dynamic guide rather than a rigid set of rules.
This article provides the framework, but the power lies in its application. To help you visualise how these principles come together, you can find a sample ultra training plan here. Remember, this is a sample based on my own experience and needs; your personalied plan will (and should!) look different.
This is very useful content for me! Thank you for what you do!