By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning This past week, I had the pleasure, pain and privilege of running the Tor Des Geants in the Aosta valley of Italy. The race is a beast, boasting 24,000 M (78,741 feet) of climbing over 356 kilometers (221 miles). Within those miles is a variety of …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning This summer we had the pleasure of having Jackson Brill as one of our summer interns. Along with being a sponsored runner for Salomon, Jackson is also an undergraduate at the University of Colorado Integrative Physiology department. The University’s biomechanics department is spectacular and was pushed into …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning As has been the case for the last few years, I spent the better part of a weekend following athletes around the (newly revamped) Sur les Traces des Ducs de Savoie (TDS), Courmayeur – Champex – Chamonix (CCC), and Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) races. The races were …
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 We’ve all seen this scene play out. A runner’s crew enters an aid station with enough gear to supply a small platoon. Four duffle bags, three pairs of spare shoes, copious amounts of fluid, nutrition, lubricant and an ice bandanna – all laid out on several yoga …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning The recent release of the new Stryd foot pod caused me to take a bit of a pause and evaluate how far the running power meter market has come and whether or not it is useful for trail and ultrarunners. Running power has always appealed to me. …
Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning In last week’s blog, I alluded to a upcoming article on running power meters. In the course of writing that article, I felt athletes would be better served with a bit of a setup and primer on how to track training so that a specific article on running …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning As this year’s Tour De France is in full swing (and extremely exciting as of late, I might add), I’m reminiscent about early in my coaching career when I worked with a variety of athletes including a stable of cyclists, triathletes and mountain bikers. As a runner …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning This article is the third in a series to review the most controversial training topics in ultrarunning. If you missed the first two, go check how to train for the downhills and strength training for ultrarunners as well as the overview article of all three. Perhaps no …
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 …