By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning I’m bullish on the future of ultrarunning. During a time where many ultrarunners are loathing a fall and winter devoid of racing, suffering from flailing motivation and a peering into the prospect that 2021 will be more of the same, I’m optimistic. If trail and ultrarunning were …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning For many years I have retained a copy of Mosby’s Manual of Diagnostic and Laboratory Tests that I fully admit was ‘permanently borrowed’ from an old coaching colleague of me. It’s a medical reference manual that is far above my educational pedigree. It’ll as dull as …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning What goes up must come down, and in the case of ultrarunning, coming down can be the more painful of the two. Running downhill leads to a lot of muscular damage (more later on how and why that’s the case) and wrecked legs, so some coaches spend …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Earlier this year I read thought provoking editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine penned by professors Jeremy Lewis and Peter O Sullivan, both specialists in physiotherapy and rehabilitation. In it, they question the current treatment patterns commonly used for musculoskeletal pain (note the editorial was …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning With this year’s Pikes Peak Marathon in the rear-view mirror, and Matt Carpenter’s 1993 course record once again untouched, it gave me a bit of pause as to what made Matt so great in his prime. I’ve long admired Matt’s has accomplishments as an athlete and …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning This year’s Summer Olympics was scheduled to be a hot one. Tokyo, already known for hot and humid summertime conditions, would have been (and probably will be) hotter than the previous three Olympic host cities (Kakamu et al. 2020). Athletes, coaches and sport scientists will do almost …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning With longer events such as FKTs, multi-day adventures and personal projects all the rage, many athletes are wondering what they can do to become better while being sleep deprived. We all know athletes who can seemingly run for two (or even three) consecutive nights without issue. Navy …
By Jason Koop CTS Coaching Director, Author of “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning” Several years ago while pacing my wife during the latter stages of the Run Rabbit Run 100 I vividly remember stumbling upon a ream of a dozen 200-mg caffeine pills. I wondered whether the runner who dropped the package was simply lazy and …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Garmin’s recent outage has been wreaking havoc on athletes. People have lost track of everything from their weekly mileage to vertical gain accumulated, and even the miles on their shoes. Some have even used the outage as an excuse to skip out on runs (if it …
by Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Truth be told, I don’t like the way most ultrarunning seasons unfold. In any normal year, once January rolls around many of the ultramarathon lotteries have been held. Runners know which races they will be doing the upcoming summer and have anywhere from 6-8 months to prepare. …