Just as life under COVID-19 restrictions was becoming… familiar, not comfortable exactly… the announcement of the phased return to “normal life” threw our lives back into chaos. As with any time of disruption and chaos I have tried to center myself on the things I love the most… time with family, feeding my brain and body, and of course running on trails.
To refocus, I wrote out my training plan for The Guzzler Half Full (50K) in November. I’m re-using my training plan from Ultra-Trail Australia. But I had some doubts about whether the plan was best for me. Or rather, some doubts about whether I understood how the plan would help me train for my next race.
I decided to get a second opinion. I started reading Jason Koop’s Training Essentials for Ultrarunning. I’ll write up a full review when I’ve finished reading. But for now I can happily report that the book filled in all the gaps in my understanding that were creating doubt. I feel that I now “get it” in terms of what each run or workout in my training plan is contributing to my enjoyment of race day.
To go along with the book, here’s a few more Jason Koop resources that have been helpful to me these last few months:
- Koopcast episode on nutrition (yes it’s 3 hours long, but worth it!) and Jason’s articles summarizing the paper (Part 1 and Part 2)
- Koopcast episode on hydration
- Koopcast episodes on strength training (Part 1 and Part 2) and blog post
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