Henry Bickerstaff: The Training Behind the Fastest 70+ Age Group 50- and 100-Mile Ultramarathon Finishes

By Andy Jones-Wilkins,
CTS Ultrarunning Pro Coach

At the 2024 Hennepin 100 in Illinois, 70-year-old ultrarunner Henry Bickerstaff from Alva, Oklahoma ran the fastest 100-mile trail race for a 70+ age group runner in North America this year. Henry achieved his finishing time of 25:12:17 through a combination of carefully designed training, near-perfect race day execution, and an optimistic mindset. Here’s a look at how it all came together.

Getting Started

I began coaching Henry in the fall of 2016. At the time he was following the training methodology from Joe Friel’s “Fast After 50” book. Although Henry was seeing some progress he felt he was not running to his potential. After finishing Western States in 2010, Henry had experienced a rough six-year streak of not finishing 100 milers. He knew he needed to do something different. On the advice of CTS Athlete Kaci Licktieg, Henry reached out to me and we hit it off immediately.

Our personalities meshed famously. I am not a cheerleader type coach and Henry is definitely not an athlete who needs a cheerleader. A typically stoic midwestern accountant, Henry doesn’t need someone to hold his hand. Rather, he needs a coach who will plan his training, hold him accountable, and carefully choose opportunities for encouragement and criticism.

2024 Training Plan

In January 2024 we mapped out a plan that would culminate at the Hennepin 100 in October. Henry wanted to gain another Western States qualifier and to build up to his best fitness level to date. We decided to focus his most intense workouts on the bike twice per week, where he could increase cardiovascular intensity with lower risk of musculoskeletal injury. On the other five days, Henry ran a mix of recovery runs, endurance runs, and interval workouts. In the nine-month build up to Hennepin, Henry averaged just over 10 hours of training per week.

As with any athlete in his or her 60s or the 70+ age group, recovery between hard and/or long efforts proved to be the biggest challenge. Through the spring and summer we communicated frequently, focused on training data as well as subjective feedback, and constantly tweaked his training to make sure he was suitably recovered in time for his next big dose of training. By the time August rolled around we had found the sweet spot between intensity and recovery. Henry was ready for the most important part of his entire build up: his three-day training camp.

Getting Race Specific

Having worked with Henry for so long I knew he had done training camps before. I also knew he liked to integrate a race into his three-day training camp as a way of anchoring the training. Henry chose the Iron Will 50 Mile race as his “training camp race”. The course was similar to Hennepin and the event took place 5 weeks ahead of his goal race. Henry ran 25 miles on the Thursday before Iron Will and 15 miles on Friday to give him a nice 90-mile camp. Even on fatigued legs he managed to run an impressive 10:09:03 at Iron Will. As of October 22, that was the fastest 50-mile trail run for a 70+ age group male in North America in 2024. At that point, we both knew he was ready and primed for a great race.

100-Mile Race Day

Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning, likes to say that the best executed races are actually boring, and Henry nailed this at Hennepin. Except for a few hours of stomach distress in the heat of the day, Henry maintained his energy levels throughout the race, took care of himself both physically and mentally, and paced the race brilliantly. So brilliantly, in fact, that over the last 40 miles of the race he passed 41 people, more than one person per mile, which was something he was particularly proud of.

In my follow up conversation with Henry, I asked him for his key takeaway from his performance. His answer was classic! “My takeaway is that anything is possible with proper physical and mental training. I think the key to my success is the understanding that training evolves as you age, and at 70 or even 60 or 50, we cannot train the same as we did when we were 20, 30 or even 40. What becomes more important is consistency and paying more attention to the little things. My workouts are much different than Kaci Lickteig’s and Katie Schide’s, but my results can be the same, and that will keep me coming back for more.”