Superior 50 | Training Philosophy

In days following the Zumbro 50 I found myself immediately wanting to find my next race. Knowing that this would likely be the case I had been checking the registration for the Superior 50 each day. The race was slowly approaching the limit.

I have never been to northern Minnesota and have always wanted to spend time on the Superior Hiking Trail. Needless to say I pulled the trigger on one of the few remaining spots the week following Zumbro.

It was an odd feeling pushing submit on Ultra Signup. In retrospect I had no idea what I had committed myself to for Zumbro, what a time commitment it would be. The Superior 50 will be a more difficult race than Zumbro. The sinking feeling in my stomach told me that I needed to find a better way to prepare for this race.

In the month leading up to Zumbro I had started to look into the training philosophy of a coach named David Roche. He is currently a coach for Andrew Skurka and he had posted a few interviews on his blog with his coach that Tyler had shared with me.

While reading those interviews his thoughts made 100% sense to me. I immediately wished that I had known what I had just read back in December.

Following that I scoured the internet digesting his articles and listening to interviews with him.

With the experience from Zumbro and new insight from David Roche I saw four major flaws in the preparation for my first 50.

• Running miles just for miles
• No focus on running economy 
• No quality workouts
• Little to no elevation gain

I more or less set a mileage goal for the week then went out and hit it.

My philosophy for Superior will be rooted in the following:

• Structuring my training in order to not take away from family time
• Example: Get your lazy butt out of bed in the early AM.
• Incorporating strides during my daily easy runs 
• Example: 10 x 20/60 striders.
• Making time and committing to core work and lunge workouts once per week
• Example: Ab Ripper X 
• Example: Lunges Front/Side/Back x40 each leg.
• One quality workout per week
• Example: Hill repeats (20 min easy | 60 sec uphill (jog down) x10 | 20 min easy)
• Example: Tempo run
• One long run with elevation gain per week (>140 feet/mile)
• Incorporate periods of harder efforts during the course of the long run.
• After 20 minute warm up run harder for 30 seconds every 5 minutes

I plan to build my mileage in similar fashion to what was recommend in the Sage running plan with David Roche's philosophy incorporated.

I figure if John Kelly can work a full time job, be an active present father, and complete the Barkley I can find a way to accomplish the balance needed to compete in the Superior 50. Starting May 29th I will find out.