Redefining What Pro Ultrarunner Training Looks Like

Written by:

Jim Rutberg

CTS Pro Cycling Coach

Updated On

April 24, 2025

What do Formula 1 drivers, World Tour cyclists, Olympic athletes, and today’s top ultrarunners have in common? They don’t just train hard. They build high-performance teams around them.

Gone are the days when elite ultrarunners trained in isolation, chasing podiums and FKTs with a DIY approach and little support. As ultrarunning grows more competitive and more professional, the top athletes are evolving how they train, recover, and perform.The CTS High-Performance Coaching Program (HPP) is helping lead that shift, redefining what it means to train like a pro.

Inspired by the support systems used in the world’s most advanced sports programs, from World Tour cycling to soccer’s Premier League, the CTS HPP surrounds each athlete with a hand-picked team of experts working together to apply cutting-edge science, technology, and methods to unlock their full potential.

And for the first group of athletes, including Katie Schide, who won both Western States and UTMB in 2024, the program’s impact is already clear.

What is the CTS High-Performance Coaching Program?

Like everything CTS does, the HPP starts with the athlete first. Elite and emerging elite athletes are chasing the final few percentage points towards their full potential. Marginal gains only matter once athletes reach the maximum performance level achievable through fundamental training. After building substantial foundations over years of training and competition, they cannot simply run more miles, climb more mountains, or do more intervals. Unlocking the final few percentage points of their maximum potential requires a “no stone unturned” pursuit of excellence.

To be accepted into the CTS HPP, a multi-disciplinary team of experts must agree that an applicant has reached the competitive level where the HPP can be a deciding factor in achieving their ultimate goal.

Once accepted into the HPP, CTS uses its proven coach-matching expertise to pair the athlete with the CTS Coach who has the best combination of sports science expertise, personal compatibility, and real-world experience relevant to the athlete’s goal. That coach, with input from the Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning, Jason Koop, then builds an integrated team of specialists designed to address the athlete’s best opportunities for improvement.

What Does An Athlete’s High-Performance Team Look Like?

The concept of the HPP was born from the knowledge that the world’s top athletes need more resources than any one individual can provide. The best ultramarathon coach is not likely to simultaneously be the greatest nutrition coach, biomechanics expert, sports psychologist, or strength and conditioning coach. As a result, the core of an HPP Athlete’s team consists of a CTS Ultrarunning Coach and hand-selected Nutrition Coach, Strength and Conditioning Coach, and Sports Psychologist from a vetted list of providers. Additional experts may be added to the team to address specific opportunities, including consultants from specific research and professional backgrounds (e.g., biomechanics, altitude training, running economy), physical therapists, medical doctors, etc.

How an Integrated Support Team Drives Performance

Integration is the difference between collaborating to enhance an athlete’s performance and creating chaos from having “too many cooks in the kitchen”. The idea of working with multiple specialists is not new, but many times seeking support from isolated professionals leads to miscommunications and conflicts because team members don’t know what the others are doing or why.

In the HPP, all the experts on an athlete’s team communicate with each other and with the athlete’s CTS Ultrarunning Coach. They are one team from the outset, all working toward the athlete’s stated goals. Sometimes this means individual coaches sacrifice a component of their training focus because the athlete needs to prioritize something else. For instance, the strength and conditioning coach may back off the intensity or volume of an ultrarunner’s weight training because the endurance coach is increasing race-specific work in the leadup to a race.

Collaboration and integration, through consistent communication and the fact all coaches have access to the athlete’s calendar and training data, helps prevent injuries, optimize recovery, and sustain peak performance. All the coaches can see when an athlete’s data starts indicating a need for more rest, or that training quality is dropping, and they can quickly act accordingly.

Proven in the Field: How the HPP Powered a Champion’s Year

A structure like the CTS HPP looks great on paper, but the real test is whether it produces results with real athletes. Katie Schide’s remarkable 2024 season was the first proof-of-concept for the HPP. After a successful 2023 season, her CTS Ultrarunning Coach, Jason Koop, realized he needed to tap into additional resources to further elevate Katie’s performance. He brought in Sarah Scozzaro for strength and conditioning, Meredith Terranova for nutrition, and additional experts for specific tasks, like physical therapy and sports psychology.

You can read this in-depth account of the integration of Katie’s training, nutrition, and strength training. A few highlights were that Koop wanted to increase Katie’s overall running volume from year to year. To do that without incurring injuries, Katie needed to commit to strength training with Sarah that would increase her durability. Sustaining a higher training volume, including strength training, meant Meredith needed to ensure Katie was consuming adequate energy and an appropriate macronutrient distribution. They got the formula right and Katie ran to a commanding victory at the 2024 Western States Endurance Race with the second-fastest finishing time for any female competitor.

HPP Athlete Fuzhao Xiang: A Custom-Built Team, A Historic Podium

Fuzhao Xiang is another CTS HPP athlete who had a standout season in 2024. Fuzhao’s team was different than Katie’s, despite the fact the 2024 Western States Endurance Race was the goal event for both athletes. Jason Koop was the lead running coach for both athletes, but Fuzhao worked with Nicole Rassmussen for strength training. A unique aspect for Fuzhao’s HPP team was sports nutrition. It was important to understand the foods available in Fuzhao’s training environment, as well as the cultural norms around meals and foods consumed during training and racing. For instance, Fuzhao comfortably and rapidly consumed massive amounts of noodles in broth while sitting in aid stations at Western States. It was a staple she trained with, so her HPP team worked to incorporate it into her race-day nutrition. She went on to finish second to Katie Schide at the 2024 Western States Endurance Race, the first podium finish by a Chinese athlete.

CTS High-Performance Director, Jason Koop, explained the program’s international success by saying, “We treat every athlete as a unique individual. Each member of the team is hand-selected to suit the athlete’s particular needs and communication style. The result is that each athlete has a set of providers that has been tailored to them and them alone and that no two teams are identical. We’ve built these teams for athletes in the US, Europe, Asia and Oceania across borders and language barriers.

Why High-Performance Programs are the Future of Sports

Elite and emerging elite athletes face greater pressure than ever before. The bar to contend for championships keeps rising. Performances that won races 10 years ago aren’t fast enough to finish in the top 20 these days! The stakes are also higher than they’ve ever been. It takes years for athletes to reach their full potential, but most can only race at their very best for a handful of years. And this is true across all endurance sports, including running (all distances), cycling, and triathlon.

High-performance programs are what’s necessary for athletes to reach their full potential in the competitive environment today and into the future. Access to multiple experts across all aspects of your sport and lifestyle will be essential for enabling athletes to achieve more, and more importantly, to extend the time they’re able to perform at their very best.

How CTS Is Leading the Way

CTS pioneered remote-based coaching 25 years ago, enabling athletes around the globe to access professional endurance coaches from their home training grounds. This also helped turn a hobbyist pursuit into a viable professional career path for endurance coaches. CTS was instrumental in the development of professional standards for endurance coaches worldwide and developed our own programs for continuing education, ongoing mentorship, and quality assurance. In ultrarunning, specifically, CTS Coach Jason Koop authored the sport’s benchmark training book, “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning” as well as the curriculum for the United Endurance Sports Coaching Academy (UESCA) Ultrarunning Coaching Certification.

CTS is uniquely positioned to build High-Performance Programs for ultrarunners and other endurance athletes. With more than 50 coaches on staff, representing professional backgrounds in endurance sports, strength training, sports psychology, physical therapy, and nutrition, collaboration is in our DNA. The HPP formalizes this integrated approach and bolsters the effectiveness for athletes by bringing in the world’s top domain experts.

As we’ve seen with other innovations CTS has spearheaded in endurance coaching, we expect high-performance programs to become the norm for organizations coaching elite and emerging elite endurance athletes in the coming years.

Conclusion: Training Smarter Means Racing Stronger, Faster, and Longer

Athletes will always be limited by time and energy availability, and elite athletes have maxed out both. There are only so many hours in a day and so much energy that can be devoted to training. Training more is no longer a viable path to going faster, staying healthy, and having a long career, but training smarter is. And at the top level of the sport, athletes need access to greater expertise and experience than any individual professional possesses. An integrated team approach is the future of elite training for endurance sports, and the CTS High-Performance Coaching Program is leading the way.