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 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, 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 I had an article all penned out for this week’s blog. It was something about what to do when you get a cold, which is raging rampantly though the running world. That was quickly put on the back burner when I learned early Sunday morning about the …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning In December, a rather provocative e-mail came through my imbox and perked my interest. The kind of e-mail that makes your eyes bulge like saucers, sweat a bit under your collar and feel guilty for having read the contents within. I’m pretty sure my heart rate …
By Jason Koop, CTS Coaching Director, Author “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning” This week, Ultrarunning Magazine will start to release their highly anticipated Ultrarunner of the Year (UROY) and Performance of the Year (POY) rankings. The rankings are a good source of banter, as the myriad of trail, road and track performances have few common threads …