By Jason Koop CTS Coaching Director Author, “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning” I’ve been to a ton of ultrarunning events over the past two years, but none as a competitor. I crewed, paced, volunteered, cheered, and supported; I just didn’t race. Earlier this year my wife signed up for a mid-October 50k, and I thought …
By David Henry, CTS Ultrarunning Coach I’ve been thinking a lot about assets and, in particular, what asset is most valuable for an ultrarunner. Is it a super-high V02 max, superior pace at lactate threshold, incredible running economy or some other metric? Those are nice, but in the end, really nothing holds quite the …
By Jason Koop, CTS Coaching Director and author of “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning” Winter is coming… at least to the northern hemisphere. While it’s not the end of the competitive season for everyone, it is for the majority of the athletes my coaches and I work with. And that brings the inevitable discussion of what …
By Jim Rutberg, co-author “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning” Race-day anxiety is normal and both novice and experienced athletes are likely to experience it before and during a challenging  50-kilometer, 50-mile, or 100-mile ultramarathon. Learning to manage it is essential to having a successful and positive experience at your next big event. Step 1: Get …
By Andy Jones-Wilkins, CTS Ultrarunning Coach Anyone who has been running ultras for a while has, at one time or another, had to fight off the urge to quit. It is simply an inevitable fact of life that for most normal humans, after about 8 hours of running, hiking, crawling, limping, whining, and shuffling, the …
By Adam St. Pierre, CTS Ultrarunning Coach I am an athlete 24 hours a day. I am also a coach 24 hours a day. And a dad 24 hours a day. And a husband. And a son. And a friend… Life would be easy if there were 120 hours in a day, but there …
By David Henry, CTS Ultrarunning Coach This run wasn’t different from any others, as far as I could tell. Another normal loop on a normal day, just putting in the miles. I was in the midst of a section of quiet road in rural Oregon I’d run dozens of times when out of the side …
We had a training blog ready to go for today, and then we got an email that changed everything: Koop, I’ve been dreaming of finishing Leadville for over thirty years and I’ve failed seven times. That’s right… seven times. But then I came across your book, hired CTS and was connected with John Fitzgerald. I entered the …
By Andy Jones-Wilkins, CTS Coach No matter an athlete’s experience level or talent there are invariably times when motivation wanes, focus is lost, and discipline sidelined. Many times this is a perfectly normal reaction to training load and can be easily remedied with a bit of time off to regroup and recharge. But what about …
By Jason Koop, CTS Coaching Director and author of “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning” Raising your legs above your heart used to be post-workout dogma, and even standard practice during downtime at any running practice or workout session. I have no idea how many hours I spent during high school and college lying on my back …