Race Course Specificity
How Important Is It To Train On Course Specific Terrain
Last week the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) took place. This has become an increasingly important week in ultramarathon over the past decade as it marks one of, if not the most competitive ultramarathons of the year. If looked through the lens of all the events that occur over the course of the week, it is hard to argue that it doesn’t collect the deepest overall level of talent in the sport of ultramarathon, certainly on the trail side.
This year was especially exciting, because it had some great storylines. Courtney Dauwalter was coming off wins at the Western States 100 (WSER), and Hardrock 100, which meant if she could secure what would be her third win on the UTMB course she would complete the triple crown of iconic 100 milers. Prior to last year’s UTMB, Jim Walmsley decided his best path to winning was moving to France so he could live and train like some of the legendary champions of the past. Falling short last year, meant another year in France, and with it the continuation of the quest to be the first American male to win UTMB.
Courtney went on to win the women’s race, completing the triple crown, and one of if not the most impressive stretch of racing ultramarathon has witnessed. Jim battled his way towards becoming the first American male to win, edging out Zach Miller.
Zach’s second place finish actually was equally as interesting and exciting to me. The reason being, Zach is also American and did not move out to Europe (he did spend some time on course). If Jim had faltered, Zach would have become the first American to win, and with a time under 20 hours produced a historically fast time that would have won outright many previous years. This spurred all sorts of conversations around how important it is to train on the course, or at least like the Europeans, in order to win a race like UTMB. It is an important question for all of us to consider even if we don’t plan on challenging the course at UTMB, as ultramarathon events often have their own unique course specifics.
How important is course specific training? I think to really understand this question it is best to first look at what you should not sacrifice in order to get it. In other words, what things in your training are more important than course specificity in the grand scheme of things.
These three things are going to be by far the biggest movers towards your success on race day.
Proper Training Load
Proper Rest
Nutrition
Proper training load is going to be individual, but the same principle applies to all. Consistently building volume, mostly at lower intensities, over years not days, weeks, or even months. The amount of volume you can tolerate will highly depend on your experience over the years and the time you have available to train. Most people won’t hit their max volume tolerable before they run out of time. The reality is the list of non-negotiables the average runner has is much longer than that of a professional athlete. These include things like non sport professional careers, family obligations (professional athletes often have families too, but when work is training, there is usually still plenty of time available to maximize volume limits), fitting in training versus building around training, and the list goes on. I say all this because I find it wise to view this aspect of training through the lens of working with what you have. You are far better off constantly being able to train 8-10 hours per week, than aim for 15 hours per week sporadically, because it is unsustainable with your lifestyle and recovery needs. You can always pull the lever of speed work development, but the value add it will produce is much greater when available volume at low intensity is first maximized.
Proper rest means that you are not only getting enough sleep to recover from your training, and the rest of your life for that matter, but also viewing it as the part of training where you actually realize your gains. You can do all the work, but if you consistently do not recover from it with proper rest, you won’t see near the benefits and will likely end up injured or burnt out, which leads to inconsistent training and the inability to maximize the proper training load part of the process. When you look at rest as something that is needed, and add some measurement tools to your training assessment that allow you to see the progress take place, you can find this balance. If you are stagnating in progress, feeling unmotivated, irritable, chronically sore/tight you may be overplaying the training load side of the equation by not providing adequate rest. This is also why proper training load often first focuses on low intensity. The opportunity cost of a low intensity session is low. Meaning you are able to get out and replicate much sooner. Whereas the opportunity cost of something higher on the intensity spectrum, like long intervals and short intervals, is higher. You need more rest to recover from those types of workouts, so they are best when you have already maximized the volume available and therefore can maintain it with less input. In short, less tradeoff in replacing some lower intensity training for higher intensity inputs.
Nutrition is important, but at the same time overcomplicated by many when it comes to ultramarathon. Sure it is a larger variable on race day, as someone competing for so long will have their success more directly tied to how well they are able to fuel and hydrate during the event, but when it comes to day to day nutrition, I suspect the door is much wider. By wider, I mean you have options. The big focus here should be taking care of the big movers within nutrition first, before you get fancy with things like macronutrient targets and dip your toe into the water of whether carbs are king or fat is fuel. The big movers are getting an adequate amount of food. At the end of the day, your body needs fuel and if it is consistently denied adequate amounts, the performance hit taken will far exceed whether you are fat adapted, gut trained, or free of any so called toxins. With intake comes things like making sure whatever dietary inputs you decide on provide enough micronutrients, and you get enough protein. I say protein, as unlike fats and carbs, its primary purpose is not fuel. It is also worth noting, that to a large degree protein may take care of itself if you are getting enough overall food in your diet as someone training will eat a high enough volume of food that protein will come along for the ride, but it also does not hurt to check. The high end of your needs is approximately 1 gram per pound of goal body weight.
All this is to say that there is actually quite a bit of value, most of the value, in getting the above really dialed in before losing sleep over whether or not you should go out of your way to access course specific terrain. It can also be periodized. For example, let’s say you are training for a 100 mile race with a lot of climbing and descending, and it is difficult, but not impossible to access course specific terrain. Losing sleep and additional training in order to go out of your way to access this terrain is likely a net loss. However, checking the above boxes adequately and using the final phase of your training to do some of your key race specific training sessions out on course specific terrain is likely worth considering. There are different ways to do this, but one could be as simple as during your race specific intensity phase of training, which should be the final phase before you taper, you can move the workouts that focus on race specific intensity onto the course specific terrain. This way you are actually practicing the intensity you will be doing on race day on the same terrain. For ultramarathon runners, this often means long run development. The extra benefit here is since the long run is a larger percentage of your mileage for the week, if you move that session(s) to course specific terrain, you minimize some of the travel logistics of going out of your way to access it. In other words, you get more duration for the effort.
A specific situation that may result in a slight pivot from the above is a unique skill set dependent course. The most obvious example of this is technical descending. If running down technical trails is a weakness, it is likely beneficial, if possible, to spend a bit more time weaving this skill development into the earlier phases of training when appropriate.
To review, get consistent with the bigger movers first. These include: proper training load and well timed intensity distribution, proper recovery focused on quality sleep and spacing between workouts, and focusing on getting the proper amount of nutrition to meet your training demands along with meeting micronutrient targets. Neglecting these will present a greater challenge to potential on event day than not having access to course specific terrain, or prioritizing course specific terrain at the expense of the above.
For a more in-depth audio version of this topic, consider checking out my podcast - Episode 366: Race Course Specificity (available on all podcast platforms soon).