14 articles
Training
Building the engine, the legs, and the weeks that hold them together.
How to Train for Your First 50K: A Coach's 16-Week Framework
The 50K is the most forgiving ultra you will ever run, and the one most people still get wrong. Here is the structure I use with first-timers.
9 minHow to Heat Acclimate for a Trail Race
Ten days of deliberate heat exposure change a hot race more than the last fortnight of training volume does. Almost nobody programmes them.
7 min50K, 50 Mile, or 100K: Choosing Your First Ultra Distance
The question isn't which distance sounds achievable. It's which one you've already earned the right to attempt.
6 minBack-to-Back Long Runs: How to Use Them Without Getting Hurt
Two long runs on consecutive days train the actual skill of ultrarunning: moving well on legs that are already tired. Most runners either never try it or overdo it immediately.
5 minReturning to Trail Running After an Injury
Re-injury doesn't usually happen during the injury. It happens in the six weeks after it, to runners who returned on a calendar instead of on evidence.
6 minWhere to Trail Run Near Lecco and Lake Como
Every route below is one I've actually sent an athlete to, matched to what their training that week needed - not a list assembled from a map.
6 minAltitude Acclimatization for Trail and Ultra Races
Arrive two days before a high mountain race and you get the worst of both worlds - not acclimatized, and past the window where you'd have raced fine on sea-level fitness alone.
6 minHow to Structure a Recovery Week
Not the taper. The other unload - the one that repeats every three or four weeks, all block long, and that most self-coached runners quietly skip the moment they feel good.
6 minCold-Weather and Winter Trail Running
Winter doesn't just make training colder. It changes footing, visibility, warm-up needs, and how much fluid you actually need - and most runners only adjust for the first one.
6 minFrom Road to Trail: What Actually Changes
Your marathon fitness transfers. Your pace expectations do not. Here is what changes when you take a road engine onto a mountain.
7 minHow to Train for Vertical Gain
Vertical is a training load with its own budget, its own progression rate, and its own set of sessions. Most runners track neither.
8 minDownhill Running: Technique, Training, and Why Your Quads Blow Up
Climbing is fitness. Descending is skill and tissue tolerance - and it causes far more late-race collapses than any climb.
7 minZone 2 on Hills: Why Heart Rate Lies on Trails
Your heart rate on a climb is describing the hill you were on thirty seconds ago. Here is what to steer by instead.
6 minStrength Training for Trail Runners: What the Research Supports
Two sessions, thirty minutes, heavy and low-rep. It improves economy, protects your descents, and the evidence for it is unusually solid.
7 min