Training for my First Ever Ultra Marathon
For those of you who don't know me, I'm Sarah.
Now, The Running Channel has set me all kinds of challenges over the last year, including training like an
Olympian for a week, following my watch for 30 days and running my first ever
marathon.
But they've now taken it up a notch and have signed me up to my first ever
ultramarathon in Thailand.
Prepping for your first ultra marathon is a little bit overwhelming, to say the least, So I
have come to the Lake district to go on a run with ultra runner Paul Tierney. Now he is pretty
used to ultras, having won the Lakeland 100 in 2015 and in 2019, he
broke the 214 Peak Wainwright's record, which he held until
2021.
So I'm heading off to the inov-8 store to meet up with Paul, and then we're going to head out on a run so I can
pick his brains about everything to do with ultras.
First, though, if you do around here, please do hit, subscribe and give this video.
a like to cheer us on.
Let's get running.
All right.
Shall we get running? Let's go.
So my first question for you, nice and simple I'm starting off with my very
first ultra.
How do I train when my goal is to finish?
Yeah.
So, um, firstly, it's important to establish a
routine and get consistency in your training so you don't need to do anything
mad and different and start to pile on loads of mileage or anything like that.
Yeah, that's that's really important to establish and
consistency and make sure that your training at the right intensity so
mostly easy.
Um, And then you can start to add a little
bit of and faster stuff in there because it will help to to
train the muscles in a way that maybe they're not used to.
So you start to, you know, recruit more of your available
muscle fibres, which is it's almost like it's almost like strength training, in a way.
So you're it's a way of making the body adapt
a little bit differently.
If you always.
If you only ever run slowly, then you're only ever going to train a
certain amount of your muscle fibres.
So it's important to to maybe start to add stuff like Hill sprints are
fast surges.
30 40 seconds, maybe short hill
reps as well one or two minutes early on in your training, but generally speaking,
to finish your first ultra.
Just establishing that consistency and being and really relaxing
easy on your on most of your run.
So nice.
The other thing that I'm slightly worried about is so on my marathon.
I did walk some of it, and as soon as I started walking,
all my motivation just left me.
And I know in an ultra walking is a key part.
There's no point on most of them, especially if it's really mountainous
running, all of it.
So how do you kind of train yourself to have that
kind of diligence with walking and running and not letting the walking
completely
just throw all motivation out the window? Right,
Well, well, firstly, in in a really mountainous
ultra, it probably won't throw you out because you'll see
everyone else doing the same thing.
And so it's totally part of the race.
I think what you're saying about the marathon.
Yeah, you're expected to run a marathon.
It's just that's the culture, you know, so it can be
quite demoralising if you have to slow down and walk.
But in ultra, it's an accepted, certainly in hilly
ultras.
It's an accepted part of it, and you're you'll conserve a little bit of
energy, even the variability of walking versus running.
It would be nice for your body, Uh, you want knacker your legs as
quickly.
And it's much easier, obviously, to keep your breathing and your effort under
control if you're hiking rather than running up your so
I think, just accepting that you're going to have to and that most like
90% of people are going to be doing the same thing as you.
That should help to, you know, to relax your
mind about about walking.
So ultramarathons obviously come in lots of different forms.
You've got 24 hour track.
Grace is all the more traditional hill versions.
Now I'm going to be running up in the mountains.
Paul, what are your top tips?
You're running up hills like this when it gets this steep in a long ways, then it's
time to walk.
Oh, it's time to walk Absolutely fine.
I'm on board of that.
So when you are walking in a race, what kind of things are you thinking about?
It's important to walk with a bit of purpose.
You know you're not out for a stroll either, but you're basically just
trying to control your efforts.
So if you can run and keep your effort at a sustainable
what you feel is sustainable for the duration of the race, then you know that's
that's okay.
But and walking is, generally it's going to be easier to keep
your effort in check.
So that's why you would do it.
Um, it's OK if you're maybe working a little bit harder for short periods of time
You know, on a hill like this, and when it's really steep, even walking, you can get a bit out of breath.
And that's not the end of the world.
But if you were trying to sustain this for two or three hours at a
time, you'd be totally spent, and you would either
not finish or uh, probably have a much
slower finish time.
Then you'd hope for because you'll run out of steam.
Right, made it to the top of the first hill.
Oh, through we go.
Shall we do a bit more running?
That's great.
So when you start running again after coming off the hill.
Is there anything that you need to consider?
You know when you can feel the lactic acid in your legs burning.
I mean, it can help just to walk a little bit further, not
try and get straight into running.
I mean, it depends on the race.
I guess, for you in a much longer race.
You know, if you an extra 20 seconds just to get your legs used to moving a little
quicker by walking won't make much of an overall difference.
How do you think about speed?
Because obviously, in a relatively flat road race, which is what
I'm used to, I go for kind of average pace across the whole thing.
But when you've got elevation to consider, how do you kind of track how
you should be feeling?
Uhh!
Well personally,
Um, you know, there's lots of different ways to do it.
Some people will use heart rate so they'll try and stick to a certain heart rate.
I think in races I'm not that keen on it in training either.
But in races, you really need to be going off how you feel and and That's a
skill you can develop just by practising it.
You can use a scale 1 to 10.
Are you sitting around the the four or five mark in your long
Ultra race?
That's probably about right.
But you know, if it's really, really steep for a short period of time, you might work slightly harder.
It's often quite easy to not know where your limit is, and that's
where I've certainly found speedier stuff to be really useful.
If I know what 10 out of 10 is on a
all out flat five K.
Then when I'm moving into an ultra, I know what that four out of five is
because I've experienced 10.
Yeah, yeah, and that goes back to having a
variety of paces.
Even though most of your training will be easy, moving through a variety of different cases
actually helps give you a sense of what easy is.
Yes,
so when you step up to an ultra marathon, one of the things that I found a little bit
daunting when signing up was there is a mandatory kit list for the first time
now, you might get a few things like that on marathons, but having a kind of specific
list of stuff that you need to buy, and then for the one that I'm doing.
There's also recommended list underneath.
It's all a little bit overwhelming and daunting.
So what have you found to be the kind of key items that you take with you on every single
ultra. Once I have everything that I have to have, But based on the rules,
I'll then look at what the weather's like, how long the race is and the
main essentials that I think I always have a really good waterproof that's
lightweight packs down really small.
So like like a storm shell, a nice kind of warm base
layer for top and bottom.
If I'm going out doing something quite long, even if it's a long training run, I've
started to pack those things.
Now, just because you never know, you know it gets you used to carrying the stuff that
ultimately you will need to carry in the race anyway.
Your shoes obviously really, really important and a comfortable
pair of shoes.
I think it's probably the most important bit of kid you're going to have
and training in them as well.
You're going to spend a lot of time in them on the day, but that doesn't mean
that compensates for not wearing them in training.
Yeah, definitely.
And again, looking at the conditions of the race and hopefully matching the shoe.
And then I think what you put your stuff in is one of the most important
things. You can be really uncomfortable in the race if your pack doesn't fit right or if it
doesn't sit on the right place on your back.
You know, a pack that has lots of accessible pockets where you
don't have to always taken on and off is really good.
So I've got big mesh pockets here.
I can if I wanted to take my jacket off, Pop in there for when you need it again.
Rather than burying it in the bottom of the jacket and packing your
pack for those training runs like your racing, I think it is quite
important.
So we've hit a downhill, which is always the things I'm most scared
about falling over.
So what are your top tips were running downhill.
I think.
I think if you are afraid of falling over that can affect how you move and
and one way of maybe contracting that is getting used to running on a
a surface or a gradient.
That doesn't scare you.
So really, really gradual, nice, smooth surface and
just basically letting the brakes off a little bit on that and
slowly, slowly progressing that making it slightly steeper or slightly
more technical underfoot.
So we're stopped, having lunch in a beautiful location.
This is way better than my usual runs, and food is something I am so excited for this
ultra not gonna lie.
One of the reasons why I wanted to do one.
It's basically an all day picnic, but without getting too excited.
How do you tackle food during an ultra?
Um, well, it's very important to to eat on an ultra,
which should be obvious, but it's It's not always obvious to people.
I think if you've never done it then and if the races you've done are
over in a few hours, there's obviously less need to eat, and
you can get away with eating less.
But the longer the race goes on, the more that will catch up with you.
So, um, it for you a great time to
actually start practising This is on your long runs.
Um, and what you're doing is you're you're basically training your gut to be able to
