What Can New Ultrarunners Expect to Accomplish in Their First 1-2 Years?

By Darcie Murphy,
CTS Ultrarunning Pro Coach

Ultrarunning continues to grow and we’re welcoming many new athletes to events each year. If that’s you, we’re glad you’re here! New ultrarunners making the transition from marathons or from sports like triathlon or cycling sometimes struggle to establish reasonable objectives for their first ultramarathon season. What are reasonable achievements to shoot for in year one? What distance should you target? How will you know if you’re training too much or not enough? There are no universal answers, but we have guidelines to help steer you toward being successful, having fun, and staying injury-free.

Who should be considered new ultrarunners?

Many athletes come to ultra and trail running with an extensive running or endurance sport background. That means you may have a robust foundation of cardiovascular fitness. As a result, you can transition into ultramarathon training more seamlessly. In this article, we’ll focus more on athletes who may be newer to endurance sports in general. Specifically, athletes who may have 1-2 years or less of experience training for endurance sports, and who may have completed zero or very few ultradistance events (yet!)

Goals Based on Available Training Time

Before you decide what race(s) you want to target, be realistic about the time you have available for training and recovery. It’s also important to consider the relative stress level of your life, including your occupation, relationships, travel and other considerations that can and will affect your training outcomes.

Minimum Training Time Required to Race 50K

One to three events in a calendar year is a reasonable goal for new ultrarunners who juggle demanding jobs, have about 6-8 hours-per-week available for training, and who have family dynamics to navigate. This scenario is well suited to events 4 to 6 hours long, which steers athletes toward 50k races. Some weeks you may have more or fewer hours to dedicate to training, but your life requires you to be on the go so recovery opportunities are not as restful compared to an athlete that can truly relax outside of training.

Minimum Training Time Required to Race 50 Miles or 100K

If you have a more flexible schedule, about 8-12 weekly hours available for training, and light or manageable overall lifestyle stress, you may be able to successfully build up to completing an 8– to 16-hour event within one calendar year. This is loosely equivalent to a 50 miler or a 100-kilometer event. Of course, this is a general approximation. The amount of elevation gain/loss, trail surface and technical features, and weather conditions, will affect the duration and difficulty of a race.

Recommendations for Running 100 Miles

Is the 100-mile distance reasonable for athletes in their first 1-2 years training and participating in ultramarathons? It’s not impossible. Plenty of new ultrarunners have competed in a 100-miler within their first 1-2 years of ultramarathon training. Completing the distance in a single go requires most new ultrarunners to stay in motion for at least 24 hours. The potential trouble is that some of the adaptations required for success (i.e. musculoskeletal adaptations, gut tolerance, running economy, etc.) may be underdeveloped. As a result, one or more of these aspects can become a failure point that leads to a DNF. Even if you have almost infinite time for training and recovering each week, finishing events that will take 24 hours or longer to complete will be a stretch within the first 1-2 years of ultramarathon training, . You may be better served by doing a few shorter events, while gathering knowledge that you can apply to longer duration events down the road.

Be consistent and give yourself a long runway

Consistency over a long period of time is the best gift you can give yourself. Try to avoid prolonged periods of missed training. Remember, even though you are preparing for an ultramarathon, short training runs are better than not running at all. It doesn’t take much stimulus to at least keep the fitness you already have.

Whether you have a lot or a little time available for training, on a few or several days per week, your training should move from less event specific to more event specific as it gets closer. This is the best way to develop your fitness and also for your health and injury prevention. In turn, you’ll be able to continue a regular training routine. This isn’t to say every single week will be as consistent as prior blocks of training. If you get off track, ease back in, set realistic short-term goals and regain your consistency as soon as possible.

Keep track of your training and plot recovery periods

You can’t effectively manage what you’re not measuring. Although you could keep a hand-written journal, we recommend storing your training data digitally and maintaining a record from the start. And be sure to include subjective feedback as well as numerical data. You may not realize now insightful this may be down the road. You can refer to this record for insights into what worked, what may not have gone well, and how to adjust the training load (intensity, elevation gain/loss, etc). This longitudinal data is tremendously valuable for you and any coaches you work with.

In addition to tracking your training accurately, build dedicated recovery periods into the plan. There isn’t a magical duration for each recovery period. It should be related to the demands of the training block you completed. Recovery periods are typically between 3-8 days. (This is different than an extended “transition period” after the racing season.) Ideally you begin each training block rested and ready to do more work, but don’t extend your recovery period so long that you begin to detrain.

Determine both process and outcome goals

Lastly, create a concrete picture of your outcome goals and your process goals. Often, in the journey you travel to reach the starting line, you’ll develop much more as an athlete and probably, as a person, than you will during your race(s). If you’re unclear about your reasons for racing, it will be impossible to know if you’ve achieved your objectives. Finishing the race is an obvious outcome goal, but there should be some targets beyond finishing. In fact, there are nearly limitless accomplishments new ultrarunners can achieve in a calendar year that are completely independent of races. Setting out realistic achievement markers along the way is a way to all but ensure you achieve success.

As you develop as an ultrarunner, forge relationships within the community, celebrate the many adventures you experience, and appreciate the knowledge and fitness you can gain along the way. There really isn’t a true end point or any event distance or duration that’s better than any other. Honor where you are, continue to make strides forward to see what you can accomplish in the future. Be smart as you proceed, especially in the early stages, and you’ll create miles of great trail memories.