I'm not shrinking that in hopes that it's readable. I'm considering this training plan (it's a "first-timers" 50k trail plan by David Roche, that he wrote for TrailRunnerMag. And honestly, from all of the digging around on the internet that I've done, this seems like one of the most "reasonable" plans to start with. Higdon's 50k plan, as a comparison starts off with mileage-based days, and switches to "hours" based days. It would have be running 26mi in the first week, and 50mi at week 15 (or 26 weeks.) And then it switches to hours and with my paces, it would then drop sharply back down and rebuild to approximately 50mi again on peak week. (And can I just say that Higdon's beginner plans are boringAF? It's all easy pace or goal pace for the entirety of the plan.) Still, as a member of team not-so-fast, and DopeyBadger training plans, I have reservations.
It's an ok plan. Pretty standard, as you said.
I really, really don't like trail running plans that are based on mileage, i.e., "run 5 miles today", "run 10 miles today", etc. Depending on the trail you run for the day, your pace may vary widely, so 5 miles on one trail will be a lot longer time-wise than 5 miles on a different trail. Weather conditions (T+D, and things like muddy trails versus dry trails) also factor into this more than they do for road running.
So....if you have a couple different trails to chose from, you might say, "Wow, 10 miles is a lot, so let's go with the 'easy' trail today." and then you end up doing your long efforts on a surface that isn't helping you as much with your training.
I would personally pick an average pace (maybe 13:00 min/mi) and translate the distances into times and run for that. So, a day of "run 5 miles" turns into "run 75 minutes". What I mean is, take the whole plan, and do a conversion from mileage to time, and then toss the original plan and only look at the "run by time" plan. I don't mean to do it day-by-day. Depending on your trail, doing "run 75 minutes" may be more or less than the 5 miles the original plan had. But you're getting the right amount of effort in.
Then when you choose your trails (if you have a choice) for training, make sure you're mostly choosing ones as similar to the race as you can...if your race is hilly, get some hills. If your race has a lot of roots or rocks, try to run on that. And don't sweat it if your mileage is not as much as the original plan prescribes. Definitely do not always choose the easy, flat trail, because you'll regret it in the race.
The other big benefit of training by time is you actually KNOW HOW LONG it will take you to do the training that day. Very important for planning the rest of your life!
But...you do need to make sure you're running enough on this. I have read a few books on trail and ultrarunning, and those that talk about running "for time" rather than "for distance" have a guideline of your longest run being about 75% of the time you estimate it will take you to finish the race. So for my first 50k, I was estimating it would take me 8 hours, so my longest run was 6 hours.
A note on this....if you follow
@DopeyBadger 's training plans, which I think are very, very good for road running, you'll note that something like 6 hours is a lot longer than the 2.5 hours he generally recommends for a long run. But there are some differences here. You should generally be running at a lower effort level (not "LR" effort but still "easy" effort) and trail running naturally has a lot of changes in pace, usually with the hills, including some walking, which makes this better. It's more like run/walk/run training.
Along the same vein, usually road running and non-ultra plans say "don't let your long run be more than X percentage of your weekly mileage", but again for ultras, the reality of how much time mere mortals have to put into training comes into play. You can do a bigger fraction of your weekly running in your long run IF you scale down the effort on the long run. So keep the long runs easy effort.
-Holy **** those are some long longruns and back-to-backs. My longest long runs for Dopey/marathons capped out at 13.1mi. And while I know that this is a longer distance AND trails, teen-mileage (3-6 hours) on a Saturday followed by a 90min-ish run on Sunday is......a lot. For the whole summer. Every freaking weekend. This is literally the biggest part to try to wrap my brain around. Like....if we go camping for a weekend, I'm gonna get up on Saturday morning and be like "bye babe! See you just before lunchtime, where I'll be useless for the rest of the day, and tomorrow when we get home and unhook the camper I'm gonna peace out for another 2 hours!" DH is supportive, but I don't know if he's that supportive.
Yes, yes, yes...you need back-to-back runs. 50k is long. Your legs will be tired. So you need to practice for it. Most trail/ultra books strongly recommend this.
I prefer to do my medium-long run on Saturdays and my long runs on Sundays. I will cap my Saturday run at 90 minutes, and then my long run goes up to the time length I described above.
Again,
@DopeyBadger also recommends something like this for marathon training, if you would like extra support for this reasoning.
-It's only 16 weeks? I would definitely have to do a supplemental plan before this started.
Most people can't/won't commit to something longer, so this is pretty standard - plus, something longer means you have to be thinking WAY ahead. For my first 50k, I wrote myself a 23-week plan. That may be a BIT long for folks, but it let me really ramp up the long runs gradually with lots of cut-back weeks. I think it would be a great idea to do something like 4 weeks of base building before this plan. (Actually, somewhere in the fine print they probably said something like "assuming you have a good base" and not that you're starting after a break or something.)
-How much elevation would I need to build in with routes to go with the "hill strides" to be getting *enough* elevation
Usually the recommendation is to think about your elevation more on a weekly basis. The rule of thumb is that your peak week of training should add up to at least as much elevation gain as you'll be getting in your race. So 4800 ft elevation gain in your race means at least 4800 ft of elevation gain in your peak week.
That's sort of a minimum to be well-prepared. Unless you're running an unusually flat race, you really can't get too much elevation gain in training. Most people (except like
@Professor_Cookie) are limited by access to a lot of hills to conveniently get a lot of elevation without going insane from going up and down the same hill over and over.
Regarding the hill strides: I am having trouble reading the small font in the table, so I'm not sure I see these. Do you mean the 4 x 30 sec uphills? In 30 sec, you're not going to get much elevation gain no matter what - not anything that will really add up. Just do these on a challenging hill.
The real elevation gain comes on ALL your training runs. Don't avoid hills. Run them as part of your easy runs every day if you can. This will help you learn how to run easy uphills without burning yourself out by going too hard and also learn how to judge which hills you should walk.
-I would have to tweak the final week by 1 day for the race. I don't feel like this is a big deal because my only goal is finishing.
The last week of a plan is really not very important. You won't make any gains in that week. The idea is just to keep your legs fresh but not to wear yourself out. It's probably more important to just make sure you get a lot of sleep, especially before an ultra.
I can definitely foresee myself having a hard time sticking with the plan well, but I have no idea if cutting anything back would make sense.
I wouldn't really suggest cutting anything. If you find you can't consistently do the 5 days per week of running, then maybe think about how to swap some running for useful cross-training that you can do consistently. But all the days of running are to make sure you build up your muscles and skeleton for the pounding and fatigue you will eventually get to.
I would recommend taking the 2 days/week of rest and if you do any cross-training, make it easy.
The things I *think* I'll like based on reading it:
-There's some variety. It's not ___miles easy every single day.
-There are 2 rest days per week.
-It peaks at 45mi. That's a lot, but probably necessary.
-I could possibly fit in a 9 week "speed training" block before I started this plan (assuming all of my referee aches go away by the end of the month)
-The first 2 weeks don't scare me. I could do those right now and be fine (without my current aches.)
My only comment here would be that that 45 mi/wk in the peak week, I would prefer to see it in total training time, but as I said above, that's my preferred training philosophy.
I hope this is all helpful!
