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 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 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 …
By Andy Jones-Wilkins CTS Ultrarunning Coach When I turned 50 I felt like an old man, just like that. While I know “age is just a number” there was something about the Big 5-0 that felt a bit different. Put bluntly, it felt to me that after 50 I was on the downhill side of …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning This article is the third in a series of how to use poles in trail and ultrarunning. If you missed article one (when poles are beneficial and when they are not) and two (how to choose the right type and length of poles), go check them out! …
By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning To pole or not to pole, that is the question! Over the next 4 weeks, this blog will explore how, when and why to use poles in ultrarunning. Aided by the poignant research of our summer intern Jackson Brill, we will review the science of how poles …