7 Keys to Being A Stronger Ultrarunner Next Season

Written by:

Ryne Anderson

CTS Pro Ultrarunning Coach

Updated On

October 9, 2025

There is nothing more powerful in endurance sports than accumulated training time. You can be a better trail and ultra runner next season because the season that just ended is in your training bank. Whether you are new to the sport or aiming to finish events within the time limit, win your age group, or stand on an overall podium, one thing every athlete can accomplish is getting better year over year. Here are some of the ways I help athletes I work with to improve from season to season.

Why Is Fall Pre-Season Training for Next Summer?

If your primary event or race season is in the spring and summer, then fall is the perfect time to reflect on this season’s successes and areas to improve for next season. Then it’s time to formulate a plan that builds on the successes and addresses areas to improve.

The fall or “Transition Period” isn’t necessarily doing more training. Rather, it’s about being smarter with your time and focus so that when the time comes, you are in a place to start confidently building towards your A race. With less pressure, more intentionality, and greater focus, you can approach areas to improve with curiosity and patience.

Step 1: Assess Your Recently-Ended Season

To determine how to make next season better, you need to first assess how the past season went. What went well? Where can you improve? These questions pertain not only to raceday, but also to how training went in the months leading up to it. Nearly all raceday issues can be solved via better training and preparation.

Reflect on this season’s races and training blocks for positive and negative themes. Example questions to ask yourself:

• Was there a specific terrain on which you thrived or had difficulty? (e.g., technical terrain, runnable trails, climbing, descending)
• How did you handle different levels of training volume? Specifically, look at overall volume and volume of intensity. Where was the tipping point at which you went from thriving in training with the right blend of overall volume and volume of intensity compared to feeling over the edge? Can you identify patterns that associate a specific type of intensity with a subsequent poor performance, excess fatigue, or injury?
• For nutrition, did you struggle to find a variety of gels, liquid calories, and real food options that worked well? Struggle to stay on top of hydration? Did you hit a wall in long runs or races in which certain gels or food no longer worked?
• Did you struggle to find the right pair of shoes that give you the most confidence? Could you never find the hydration vest that worked perfectly? Was there a recurring blister issue that could never be solved?

The goal is to identify specific pain points and address them. If you have a long list of things that went wrong, it just means you have lots of opportunities for improvement before next season. Don’t necessarily try to fix all of them at once. If you can solve a few of these pain points during this low stakes period of training, you can start the build towards your A race with renewed confidence.

Rest Without Fear Of Detraining

Fear of losing fitness prevents a lot of athletes from taking a meaningful break from training. Questions and statements we hear from athletes include: “If I cut back on training significantly, will I lose all my fitness?” “I can’t take downtime or all that hard work from this year will be lost.”  The reality is, a prolonged (3-4 weeks) period of rest and unstructured exercise can be very beneficial for trail and ultra runners who piled on training volume during the preceding months. Thankfully, your fears of detraining are largely overblown.

You can cut your weekly training volume in half for 4-6 weeks and only lose 5-10% of fitness. That 5-10% of loss fitness will come back within weeks once your training picks back up. In my experience, that 5-10% loss is always worth it in the grand scheme of things for an athlete. Athletes who keep the pedal to the metal year round are far more likely to get to the start line mentally and emotionally drained, if they’re not sidelined by injury long before raceday. And even if you manage to stay healthy and motivated, failing to prioritize a prolonged rest/transition period leads to a performance plateau. Taking time to truly recover is the key to creating space for your fitness and performance to grow into.

Tap Into The Power of Consistent Training 

If accumulated training time is the key driver of long-term success in trail and ultrarunning, then consistency is the mechanism to increase annual training hours year over year. Consistency doesn’t mean training every day or never taking days off. It just means establishing and sticking to a training pattern that works for you. 

Base training on frequency

During the fall/transition period, I like to help athletes define goals based on weekly frequency rather than total volume or miles per week. Defining goals based on frequency creates greater flexibility for athletes and prevents them from falling victim to the all-or-nothing mindset. For instance, a volume based goal of 8 hours of running per week can lead to procrastination and shift the bulk of those hours to the weekend. And even if they get the hours in, there’s often anxiety or guilt about letting potential training days slip earlier in the week. In contrast, a frequency goal of 4 runs per week provides structure and simplicity. Accomplishing two runs during the week and two on the weekend can feel more manageable and flexible as opposed to hitting a certain number of hours.

Give yourself more options for intensity

Another way to improve consistency is to remove some of the pressure around following a structured training plan with specific interval days. I’d rather see an athlete do one harder workout per week than skip intensity altogether. When scheduling specific interval workouts is a challenge for an athlete, I provide a handful of their favorite workouts to choose from, knowing that whatever they choose will be appropriate for the current phase of training. Perfection isn’t the goal and you don’t want the pursuit of precision to become overwhelming. 

Stick To A Simple Plan

The simpler the plan, the better. In addition to frequency based goals as outlined above, you can also make other goals simple and specific. If you struggled on technical terrain this season, make it a point to hit a challenging technical trail once a week. If there was a gap in finding real food calories sources, do each of your long runs fueling only with real food. Maybe 10 hours per week of training that included two hard workouts per week was your tipping point for excess fatigue, illness, or injury. Take away one or both of those hard workouts for a while and see if you can sustainably work beyond 10 hours per week of moderate training.

Create Greater Accountability

Discipline and motivation fade, but accountability keeps athletes on track. We all hope to be accountable to ourselves, but an external force or presence can often help. Ways to create greater accountability include:

• Get a coach: Obviously, I’m biased here because I’m a professional coach. But accountability is one of the leading reasons new athletes cite for signing up for coaching, and one of the biggest reasons experienced athletes stick with it. 
• Recruit training partners: If someone is waiting for you at the trailhead, you’ll show up for that run. Same goes for the gym for strength training. 
• Pick a local group run: To make group runs even more of an accountability tool, make friends at the group run so someone will miss you if you don’t show up.
• Schedule monthly events: They shouldn’t all be ultras! It could be a local 5k or 10l or a trail race that’s less than or about equal to the duration of your normal long runs. The point here is to have a goal on the periphery each month to help with accountability.

Accountability leads to consistency, which helps you sustain a positive feedback loop anchored by the rhythm of your training routines. Without accountability and consistency, it’s easier to fall behind training goals, feel discouraged, and then regret starting off next season behind what you had originally envisioned.

Takeaways

The most important part of setting yourself up for a successful season is starting out mentally and emotionally fresh. Time to train can be challenging to balance with life demands, and we can be pulled in many different directions. There will be times of the year where the emotional and mental loads are higher than the physical training load. A hedge for handling those periods of high stress is to balance them with intentional periods of the year with a lower load.

Focus on simplicity and consistency. Clearly define goals for yourself based on frequency and enact strategies to hold yourself accountable. The athletes who maintain consistency during the down periods of the year are better set up to succeed simply by the fact that they can quickly get back into training rather than needing to take weeks or months to build back up from a break that had little to no structure.