By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning One of my coaching principles is to ‘coach the person first’. The main message of that philosophy is to treat athletes as people first. Their athletic endeavors, whether finishing their first 100-mile race or nabbing their next belt buckle, are all part of the equation but do …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Ultrarunning is a sport built on adversity. Extreme distances, fickle weather and countless other hurdles will seemingly coordinate and conspire in the universe’s cruel attempt to throw you off of your game. Yet, we are a triumphant lot. Whether it is Killian Jornet winning the Hardrock 100 …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Life these past few weeks has been full of restrictions. Some of us can no longer leave our homes except for the essentials. Most cannot eat at a restaurant, congregate in groups of more than 10, find toilet paper in the store, go to the movies or …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning I have met two distinct types of athletes in my coaching career. Those who play the long game and those who do not. With athletes who play the long game, I usually have the opportunity to coach them for many years and many events. Athletes not playing …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning This weekend I had the opportunity to attend the latest edition of the 128-kilometer Transgracanaria and support CTS Athletes Kaci Lickteig, Dylan Bowman and Gediminas Grinius. It has become a feature race on the ultramarathon scene and this year’s edition featured athletes from 56 different countries taking …
By Jason Koop with Jim Rutberg, Co-authors of “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning” This week I will be jet hopping across the eastern seaboard as well as over in Europe to record a few podcasts and support athletes racing at Transgrancanaria. With the ongoing COVID-19 (formerly known as the Coronavirus) outbreak, I did not take this …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Let’s face it, training can often be boring. You do the same routes and there’s only so many ways you can (correctly) contrive workouts. You wake up, run, eat, go to work, rest, rinse, repeat. Most people have some vague pattern of run hard one day, run …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning This past weekend, I spent some time coaching and observing runners at the Black Canyons ultras. Over the last few years, I’ve found this to be a good litmus test of how runners are approaching training for the upcoming season. The race is early enough in the …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning If you want a quick fix or simple answer to all of your training needs, stop here. Go somewhere else and read another article as I’m not going to offer that up today. Every month or so, a new study comes out comparing one interval type to …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Old man winter is here and that means it’s time for athletes to get knocked out with the cold, flu and generic ‘bugs’ of all shapes and sizes. Whether a day off comes from an illness, injury, or one of life’s myriad of curveballs, at some point …