By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning When I was 30 I bemoaned getting slower and weaker. I thought I was old and I would never be as good as I was in my 20’s. Not true. By any performance measure I can think of, I am a better ultrarunner in my 40s than …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning By the time this newsletter hits your inbox, runners in the 2020 edition should have been testing themselves along the course of the Badwater 135, which many consider to be ‘the world’s toughest footrace’. Alas, in a very last-minute decision, organizers of the Badwater 135 cancelled …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Every week when I sit down to build workouts for athletes, I have an unlimited number of combinations I can choose from. I can create intervals ranging from seconds to hours. I can manipulate the intensity of intervals, combine different interval modalities into one workout, vary the …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Open up any training program from any running publication and you will inevitably see the following training structure: 3 weeks ‘on’ 1 week ‘off’ In normal training nomenclature this means you train hard for three weeks, take one week easy, and then repeat that cycle. Did you …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning This year has challenged athletes like never before. Races have been put on ice, motivation has been flailing, and political, physical, and social wellbeing around the world has been strained to say the least. As a coach, I’ve been helping my athletes adapt to this changing environment. …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning A few weeks ago would have been the 7th edition of our staple Memorial Day Ultrarunning Camp. What was once a low-key camp I held with only a few select athletes had grown into an event sold out months in advance. We hold the camp out of …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning We lost a great one late last week. Ultrarunner, author, and heavy metal Zen monk sober warrior David Clark passed away May 21st after complications from surgery to repair a herniated disc. If you are not familiar with David’s story, you should be. A former 320-pound …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning In-person racing will undoubtedly look different when it returns, whether it’s in 2020 or 2021. Physical distancing norms, crowd size limits and sanitization procedures are going to give race directors a few grey hairs, and they will impact runners as well. Simple things like pre-race briefings …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning One of the first things I do with any new athlete is to create a Long Range Plan, a big picture view of an entire season indicating where the major races will be and when to focus on intensity, higher amounts of vertical, and longer long …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Let’s face it, for many ultrarunners have been feeling stuck in a rut over the last several weeks. You might be getting bored of the same loops, running by yourself, and slipping your mask on and off as you pass other runners. And all that has been …