Lessons Learned from the Leadville 100 Trail Race

That leads me to my first tip for taking on any challenge: "Know Your Why."

Without a sense of purpose, any big thing you hope to accomplish will come to a halt when things get hard.

For me, that's to do hard things. I like what the great thinker Matthew McConaughey says,
 
"We don't live longer when we try not to die. We live longer when we are too busy living."

But on top of the philosophical, knowing how to do it is just as important if you aspire to race a long distance.

There's a fine balance between digging into grit and mental toughness, and staying within your physiological sweet spot.

The unforgivable curses are missing your pacing early on and getting behind on calories, which both amplify exponentially later.  

However, your strategy is more than knowing a general speed to maintain and eating along the way.

Some of the things you must also consider the steep segments you plan to hike, the time allocated for aid stations, your fueling schedule, heart rate zones and thresholds, and then wisely adjust those things on the fly based on how you're feeling.

In learning about the ultramarathon, I gathered a ton of good info from The Science of Ultra Podcast by Shawn Bearden.  

Based on his experience as a runner and background as an exercise physiology professor, he recommends running 50 miles per week to finish and more than 70 miles per week to perform well for at least six weeks before your taper.

However, like building strength, getting up to that weekly mileage takes time and graded exposure.  You can get your heart and muscles there relatively quickly, it's that your joints and connective tissue need the gradual exposure to not fall apart.  

You need great cardiovascular and metabolic ability to go fast in a race, but to maintain a subthreshold pace for hours on end (especially in the mountains) strength is an essential need.

Before the race, I spent three days in Leadville at a running camp for the race. At this camp, you ran the course and talked to race experts, and one of the most common questions was, "How do I train for the climbs if I don't live at elevation?"

I sat there and listened politely about treadmills and running in parking garages, but inside my exercise brain was screaming...

These things develop the strength and contractile ability to run more efficiently, and bound up and down mountains with ease.  And if you can do it with load, moving your bodyweight is that much easier.

Still, I find that runners put lifting on the back burner in place of more miles.

The best part of the entire experience was much more than just the race, it was the whole journey to get there.

Along with the race itself, I had 6, 7, and 8-hour training sessions as part of my training plan.  At first that idea was daunting, but rather than simply hitting the start button on my watch, I found some other races, 14ers, and notable trails to tackle.

These mini-events are lower-stress opportunities to test some things out and take chances in your training.  It's where you develop the strategy discussed above, and get your feet wet for what's to come.

Take advantage of a few low-key races, or make an event out of a few training sessions to keep things exciting and hone your strategy.

This is the thing that did me in, and unfortunately, I learned too late in the game.

Around mile 75, I realized I had a long shot of making the 25-hour mark I had hoped for if I could only maintain my clip through the end of the race.

The problem was that my feet were a mess with blisters and pressure points, that were especially a problem when trying to traverse some of the more technical sections at the end.

Fortunately, I had built enough buffer time to slog it in at a shuffle and make it well under the 30-hour cutoff.

So, if you're going to get into this, pick up the book Fixing Your Feet: Injury Prevention and Treatments for Athletes by John Vonhof and learn how to care for your dogs.