By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Over the past year, Fastest Known Times (FKTs) and virtual or in-person Last Person Standing (LPS) running events have grown in popularity. Although they gained notoriety because of the pandemic, I think these race formats will continue to draw athletes and eyeballs for a long time. …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning During one of our recent coaching meetings, one of our coaches brought up a scenario of an athlete who lives in the Midwest who is training for a 50-mile race with 8,000 feet of elevation gain. For this particular athlete, she might only be able to …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning This weekend along Colorado’s front range we saw a snowstorm of biblical moderately interesting proportions. Areas from Denver to Boulder and where I live in Colorado Springs received anywhere from 12-30 inches of the fluffy white powder in a matter of hours. All this made for slow …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Let’s face it, there is a good chunk of this readership that would like to lose a few pounds. Whether it’s a byproduct of a few too many adult beverages or a penchant for ice cream (raising my hand), the excess calories that add up to …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning This past week, I launched a crowd sourced data gathering project aimed at acquiring race files from a number of prominent ultramarathons around the world. The aim of the project is to find out exactly how ultrarunners pace themselves, as well as how much hiking vs. …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Over the weekend, elite ultrarunner Ruth Croft won the coveted Tarawera Ultramarathon in course record time and in the process, beat out the entire field of men and women. As is the case whenever a female ultrarunner bests the entirety of the field, the age-old debate …
Oh, how we trail runners love and loathe running uphill. Deviations from the horizontal plane elicit agony and euphoria all at the same time. Agony from the heart pumping, legs screaming feeling of increased effort; and euphoria from the accomplishment of reaching the summit. I prescribe intervals to be done uphill roughly 80% of …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Most of us are limited by time, and somehow cram ultrarunning training into our busy lives. Taking an hour at lunch or waking up an hour earlier to get a run in is more often than not the way most normal people with lives, jobs, and a …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning Interventions in sport tend to borrow and steal lessons from other disciplines and redirect them in pursuit of improved performance. Take, for example, a pair of compression socks or pneumatic compression device (like the Normatec boots). These devices were originally developed for patients with poor circulation stemming …
By Jason Koop, CTS Head Ultrarunning Coach I am going to take you through how I plan out a season for athletes using a format that I refer to as the Long-Range Plan. The Long-Range Plan (LRP) is a 30,000-foot view of the ebb and flow of the season’s big picture themes, like intensity, volume, …