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. …
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, CTS Head Ultrarunning Coach When I build ultrarunning workouts for athletes, I have unlimited combinations to 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 amount recovery between intervals, and more. Despite the choices …
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 …