Art of the Low-Mileage UltraEric Robinson is one of a kind. Eric has run countless ultras, averaging 2-3 or more per month. Eric keeps careful track of his training and racing. "I record my race entries in a spreadsheet," he says. "Sometimes I realize on Friday that I'm entered in a race the next morning. It can be quite a scramble to get ready in time!" Eric keeps close track of his training and learns from his experiences. Eric posted the following reports on the online ultra lists during 1996. They're worth reading if you're interested in running ultras on low training mileage. I call this kind of training the Shearer/Robinson method, after Eric Robinson and Suzi Shearer. Suzi has run more 100-milers than any other female runner. Suzi's and Eric's training is virtually identical, and consists of one or two very short, very easy runs on weekdays, and an ultra-length training run on the weekend. Note well: you'll feel so good on Shearer/Robinson low-mileage training that you'll be tempted to increase your weekday miles. This is counterproductive. Eric often does 400-m speedwork repeats during his mid-week run. Both Eric and Suzi have achieved extremely good results on low-mileage training. Both runners have finished the hardest of all the U.S. mountain 100-milers: the Hardrock 100, an incredibly hard race with 32,000' of climbing and a 48-hour time limit. Suzi is one of just two runners, as of this writing, ever to finish the ridiculously difficult Barkley Marathons. My most aggressive mileage ramping occurred a couple years ago when my long run went from zero to one hundred in less than six months. I believe that it succeeded because of the massive amounts of rest I got between runs (i.e. in 23 weeks I ran only 36 times). I started out trying to run at least two or three times per week, because at the time, I believed that was the minimum for any training schedule. I started to make real progress when I abandoned this idea (week 8), and decided to run only once per week unless I felt exceptionally strong. Week M T W Th F Sa Su TOT ---- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 2 2 2 6 2 2 3 5 3 1 6 7 4 7 7 14 5 6 6 6 9 10 5 24 7 12 3 15 8 21 21 9 23 23 10 3 26 29 11 6 21 27 12 12 12 13 31 31 14 21 21 15 16 23 39 16 16 16 17 36 36 18 7 7 19 13 48* 61 *10 (am) + 38 (pm) 20 11 23 34 21 43 43 22 0 23 106 106 (The following >bracketed sentence is not Eric speaking but a commonent from a runner on the Ultra list.) >Here's my basic training right now: 2-3X per >week: 4-5mi with a few 400m >"form pick-ups". 1X per week: long run, currently 16mi. In your case, you may be pretty much adapted to running 3-4 times per week, and if so your situation is probably different than mine was. However, the key to finishing the 50k will definitely be your long runs, so you should consider the shorter runs as expendable. If eliminating or reducing your short runs enables you to get in the longer stuff, by all means do so. You won't lose much, if anything, in terms of conditioning. >My goal race is a 50k, and it is 6 1/2 weeks away. You have time for two or maybe three really good long runs, plus rest between them and a taper. Since you will be increasing the distance of your long runs pretty dramatically, I would recommend two weeks between long ones, with rest weeks in between per Galloway. What percentage of your long run is running? What percentage is walking? If you're running at least 12 of the 16 miles, and are accustomed to walking, I would suggest immediately increasing your next long run to 24 miles (12 running and 12 walking). This will give you the extra "time on your feet" that you are probably lacking right now, and more than anything else, help get you ready for the distance. For the remaining long run(s), you can concentrate on increasing the overall distance as a primary goal, and the amount of running as a secondary goal. (Second post follows.) I have had the same experience about two dozen times in the past thirty months. However, many of these breaks were voluntary and in fact "experiments" to learn how much time I could take off and not lose anything from performance. I wanted to learn this to improve the tapering process before races. It turns out that a single break of 20 days is a bit longer than ideal for me, but has no real negative consequences on endurance. In general, these breaks don't seem to harm my long runs at all. I'm not sure what effect they would have on daily runs (which I usually avoid). What # of What Preceded Days Ended Layoff Off Reason(s) Layoff Date Perform -------- ---- --------- --------- -------- ------- 43 mi train 17 taper 24 hr race 7/22/95 Excel 24 hr race 14 recover/taper 31 mi race 8/6/95 Good 31 mi race 33 recover/taper/injury 50 mi race 9/9/95 Poor 50 mi race 20 recover/taper 24 hr race 11/11/95 Fair 24 hr race 13 recover 10 mi train 11/25/95 50 mi race 17 recover/injury 2 mi train 4/24/96 100 mi race 14 recover/injury 5 mi train 6/22/96 31 mi race 12 recover/taper 50 mi race 8/17/96 Poor 100 mi race 13 recover/taper 50 mi race 10/12/96 Excel 50 mi race 13 recover 14 mi train 10/26/96 13 mi race 20 taper 28 mi race 11/30/96 Excel 31 mi race 13 recover 10 mi train 2/1/97 29 mi train 13 taper 31 mi race 3/15/97 Fair 50 mi race 13 recover/taper 62 mi race 4/19/97 Poor 31 mi race 12 recover/taper 31 mi race 5/10/97 Excel 9 mi train 14 taper 100 mi race 6/28/97 Good 100 mi race 12 recover/taper 29 mi dnf 7/11/97 Poor 29 mi dnf 14 recover 9 mi train 7/26/97 50 mi race 13 recover/taper 100 mi race 9/27/97 Fair 100 mi race 13 recover/taper/injury 50 mi race 10/11/97 Good 50 mi race 13 recover/taper/injury 52 mi race 10/25/97 Fair 52 mi race 20 recover/taper/injury 25 mi dnf 11/15/97 Poor 25 mi dnf 13 recover/taper/injury 14 mi dnf 11/29/97 Poor My performances are affected by a lot of factors, but whether or how long a break I had beforehand is apparently not one of them. # Eric Robinson |