Chapter 1. The Ultra Running Revolution. As this audiobook finds its way into your eager earbuds, I will be well into my third decade of being a professional coach. During that time, I've worked with thousands of individual and very different athletes. I've helped guide marathon runners, cyclists, triathletes, ultra runners, MMA fighters, motorsports athletes such as NASCAR, motocross, and Formula One drivers, various winter sports athletes, and a host of other athletes looking to develop their endurance. Some of those sports were familiar to me. As a lifelong runner, I had a background in the traditional distance events and could readily adapt into other sports like cycling and triathlon.
Running, cycling, and triathlon also had rich histories of peer-reviewed physiological research as well as books like The Daniels Running Formula and The Lore of Running to Draw Upon. In working with any moderately fit marathoner, I could use a combination of my previous running experience, the scientific literature, and other coaches' guidance to comprehensively inform training. Thankfully, as a young coach, I was in an environment that forced me outside of sports that I was familiar with, and that has made all the difference as I transitioned into the ultramarathon world. You learn the most when you're outside of your comfort zone, and let me tell you that working with MMA fighters and NASCAR drivers was way out of my comfort zone. First off, no one would mistake me for a gearhead nor a combat sports athlete. There's no chance at all. I didn't know anything about those sports and had never done them personally, which makes it pretty hard to improve athlete performance based on sheer experience. These sports also had relatively little scientific literature to draw upon and few points of reference to inform training. As a result, I was forced to learn about the sports from the ground up. So, in order to figure out how endurance training could be applied to sports not traditionally mentioned alongside marathon running, cycling, or triathlon, I developed the method of first meticulously learning about the sport before diving into the X's and O's of coaching.
I would peel apart the physiological and psychological demands of the sport using a combination of old-school observation and best practices borrowed from similar sports. As an example, when our coaching team started working with NASCAR drivers, we had never seen the inside of a race car, never attended a race, and didn't even know the basic rule structure. So, our first order of business was to attend a routine practice alongside the engineers, pit crew, and the rest of the support system required to operate a NASCAR team. In order to gain some initial insight, we rigged up the drivers with heart rate monitors and observed their breathing patterns over race radio to determine the cardiovascular stress during a race.
As it turns out, their heart and lungs are working just as hard as any marathoner. So, we designed training strategies for these athletes that leveraged proven training methods from other endurance disciplines. We had them trained like marathoners and triathletes, complete with intervals, threshold runs, and long runs. We measured the temperatures in the car and inside the specially designed suits and quickly determined the conditions are similar to any summer day in the notorious Death Valley, which, as irony would have it, would become another environment I became intimately familiar with as I became an ultramarathon coach. As a result of all this latter observation and analysis, we had them perform heat stress protocols in the sauna, not too dissimilar to any athlete preparing for a hot weather event like the Western States 100 or the Badwater 135. And you thought all there was to NASCAR was to sit down and turn left. The results we attained provided proof that endurance training techniques can improve performance in sports outside the traditional endurance sports. Reducing the physical strain on the drivers through improved cardiovascular fitness and heat tolerance improved their driving. The drivers were better able to control their cars and communicate with their team because fewer of their physiological resources were dedicated to fighting the demands of the event.
All of these interventions were developed through observation and borrowing protocols from other sports. A tactic that would serve me well as I entered into the realm of ultramarathon coaching. As ironic as it might sound now, ultrarunners were actually very late to the table when it came to adopting and accepting coaching. And it was not from a lack of me trying. In the early 2000s, I spent frustrating amounts of time trying to convince elite ultrarunners that coaching would be a good thing for them. Ultrarunning is a complicated affair. So in my mind, it seemed clear that some professional guidance would do the sports elite athletes some good. Alas, in those early years, my pitches fell on deaf ears. And I got laughed out of more than several meetings trying to convince athletes that I could offer them some guidance. Finally, sometime around 2004, some of these elite ultrarunners started to turn the corner and seek out professional coaching. Being that this was a new sport group to work with, I did what I always did with a new sport. I dug through copious amounts of research and looked for guidance. Except in this case, there was little to be found. The same year I started working with ultrarunners, there were exactly six research papers published on the subject. No books on ultramarathon training existed, and any guidance I could find had to be mined from blogs, anecdotes, and the infamous ultra listserv,
which was a message board for ultrarunners that the old timers will remember very fondly. So, absent any scientific guidance, just like with the aforementioned NASCAR drivers, I went and I observed. I went to races, paced athletes, spoke with those who were successful, and started running ultramarathons myself, all in an effort to understand the sport better. I also borrow best practices from cycling, triathlon, and even cross-country skiing, because in many cases, the demands from those sports overlap with ultrarunning. Developing training strategies through observation and educated guessing works to an extent, particularly when it's all you have. And I have to say, the athletes I worked with in those early years did far better than anticipated. They thrived, won races around the globe, and achieved success that far outpaced their peers. People started to notice. So much so that a cottage coaching industry for ultrarunning coaching sprouted and blossomed, which was in stark contrast to the early 2000s when I was routinely laughed at for suggesting such a proposition. As the sport grew and elite performances improved, the pace of research into what constitutes ultramarathon performance increased, all of this was good for athletes. Better information led to evolutions and coaching practices across the entire sport, and more information for athletes to use on their own. But still, it was
scattered. I wanted a way to consolidate it all. I wanted something that would present the training methodologies I had observed and curated side by side with emerging research. I wanted something that could synthesize best practices, the art of coaching, and emerging science to provide a comprehensive guide for ultramarathon athletes and their coaches. And for the first 15 years I coached ultra runners, this amalgamation of science and practice failed to emerge. The first edition of this book was written in large part to create the book I wanted as a coach and an athlete. I sought to create a reference that would inspire, inform, and guide ultra runners and coaches along their individual journeys.
I wanted to create a book that I personally would have turned to when I first started working with ultra runners, much like I used the Jack Daniels running formula and the lore of running early in my coaching career. And by any measuring stick, that effort was a success. Ultra runners all along the spectrum, from novices to the elites, finally had a book that blended science and practice into a cohesive narrative. They had a manual to guide them, regardless of whether they were training for a 50k in the desert, 200 miles in the mountains, or any distance and terrain in between. Tens of thousands of copies of the first edition of this book have been sold. It's been translated into multiple languages, and I have traveled around the world to give lectures on the contents. I even had to recruit, screen, and train an entire ultra running coaching department in order to satiate the demand for athletes wanting to be coached. Despite that success, the first edition of this book had some detractors. The training methods came under scrutiny, as they rightfully should, and at times by influential and well-known coaches.
In 2016, just before the first edition of this book went to press, I was profiled by Trailrunner magazine for a feature in their annual Dirt edition. The feature contained the normal Q&A style interview, complete with a tour of my office and physiology lab, as well as interviews with many of the athletes I had worked with. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the article's author also gathered the opinions of trail running coaches David Roche, Ian Torrance, and Ian Sharman. Coach Roche described some of the training strategies I use as chasing marginal gains, which is a contentious strategy that aims to compound many small incremental improvements to potentially create a larger, meaningful benefit. Coaches Torrance and Sharman were critical of some of the strategic underpinnings I use for ultrarunners that are derived from different sports, particularly those that stem from cycling. Since the first edition of this book was published, some of those criticisms have continued. I've been told, you don't believe in strength training, or ultrarunners are not cross-country skiers, and the like. The fact of the matter is, most of these criticisms have been ill-informed, short-sighted, poorly thought out, and lacking much-needed context. For example, anyone who has followed the hundreds of articles, interviews, and content I have posted over my career knows that I preach a consistent theme of focusing on what
matters most for improvement before chasing any marginal gains. Additionally, there are certain limited circumstances where many marginal gains can mean the difference between an athlete winning and losing or even making a cutoff or not. Ultramarathon training is highly nuanced and rewards coaches and athletes who are open to new information and willing to accept that there might be multiple paths to a successful outcome. The contents of this book exemplify this way of thinking. As you will come to find out, you can weigh the benefits you get from a sauna, strength training, or any other marginal intervention against one another to make choices on which gains to chase and which to forego. Furthermore, while ultrarunning is a unique sport, it is not so dissimilar from cycling, cross-country skiing, triathlon, marathon running, or any other endurance sport that we can't borrow and adapt research and best practices to better inform ultramarathon runners. The fact of the matter is there's far more information on training athletes in those traditional endurance sports compared to ultrarunning, and there likely always will be. The key is finding the nuance in what can be applied across different endurance disciplines and what needs to be adapted from one sport to another and what doesn't apply at all.
Our understanding of ultramarathon running continues to evolve, and this book has had to evolve as well. We know far more now about ultramarathon performance than we did at the time of the original publication. We've learned in more detail about concepts about how neuromuscular fatigue likely plays an important role in ultramarathon performances, how low-carbohydrate diets impact running economy, and that hyponatremia, which is low blood sodium, is more often caused by over-drinking fluids that do not contain sodium than not consuming enough sodium itself. The six scientific papers published in 2004 have now expanded to more than 100 per year, providing a growing trove of information coaches and athletes alike have the opportunity to digest and synthesize into their training.
With that as a backdrop, here's what is new in the second edition of Training Essentials for Ultrarunning. It's almost everything. In fact, more than 75% of the content has been revised, added to, or is completely new. Among other additions, there's an entire section devoted to low-carbohydrate diets, a complete chapter on the benefits, or lack thereof, of strength training, a chapter on mental skills for ultrarunning, and an in-depth section devoted specifically to considerations for female athletes. And to make sure I, as a male coach, wasn't unconsciously biasing the recommendations for female athletes, as often happens in various areas of research, I brought in my coaching colleague, Corinne Malcolm, to specifically pin that section.
This book also went through greater scientific scrutiny from Nick Tiller, PhD, and Stephanie Howe, PhD, both ultrarunners and well-respected in their fields. That scientific review expands upon the guidance provided by preeminent biomechanist Roger Crom, PhD, and former Western States Medical Director, Marty Hoffman, MD, in the first edition of this book. In addition to all of this, there are nearly 400 references to the existing scientific literature, all of which can be found in the book's index in the digital packet that accompanies this book. Despite these additions, you still will not find a stock training plan in this book.
If you're expecting a downloadable calendar that you can put on your refrigerator and blindly follow for the next 20 weeks, you are going to be sorely disappointed. So don't say I didn't warn you. And please, ask for your money back now before you leave a one-star Amazon review. Better yet, listen to this audiobook. And at the end, if you hate it, email me, and I will gladly refund you your money, no questions asked. This audiobook will walk you through the steps of solving your personal puzzle of ultramarathon performance. It will take you on a journey, step-by-step, on how ultramarathons work, what you can do to better prepare for them, and how you can thrive during the process.
At the end of that journey, I want you to come away well-informed and supremely confident about whatever ultramarathon adventure you have chosen. I want you to understand what it takes to make yourself a better ultrarunner. I want you to have enough information and wisdom to create and adjust your own training, your own nutrition, and your own ultramarathon game plan, and be confident with the entire process. I want you to take notes from the content in this audiobook that have particular meaning to you and engrave them into your brain. Above all else, I want you to be inspired by the training processes you uncover and the realization that you are ready to crush your most audacious goals. After all, ultrarunning is a ridiculously difficult sport, one that is rife with pitfalls and hazards that confound even the most seasoned athletes.
Preparation is your greatest ally and most powerful resource, and the information in this book will help you be as prepared as possible for when you step up to the start line. Finally, I would be remiss not to mention that this book does not have any sponsors, endorsers, or other sources of financial or business entanglement. In 2018, I made the conscious decision to alleviate myself from such conflicts of interest, real or perceived, and I have to say that the move was quite liberating. In today's world of paid partnerships, Instagram influencers, and implied endorsements, it is nearly impossible for the end consumer to ascertain what is fact from what is fiction.
While there are many athletes and influencers that authentically use and endorse the products that they are peddling, there are just as many that wear a different brand of shoe on their feet, have a different drink in their bottle, or are just taking the endorsement money and running. So, I decided to avoid these conflicts altogether and turn down every single endorsement opportunity ever since, much to the dismay of my own bank account. As a consequence, if I recommend something, it's because I believe in the product or method based on its merits, not because someone is paying me to. This freedom also allows me to opine on products and practices that are, quite frankly, junk and pseudoscientific garbage.
And I certainly don't mind calling them out as such. And for those of you listening to this and promoting this nonsense, you are right to have a big lump in your throat and have a few beads of sweat form upon your brow. As if all of this was not enough, I also acquired the rights to self-publish this book in order to make it as long, as detailed, and as accurate as possible. Plus, if I'm being honest, I wanted to say whatever the heck I wanted to, which is problematic even with the most liberal of publishers. Make no mistake that these actions cost me a copious amount of time and a fair amount of money. I hired and paid editors, contributors, printers, and the like out of my own pocket in order to get this edition of the book and audiobook off the ground.
But the trade-off is worth it, and I wouldn't change a thing. In my profession, I am ultimately a purveyor of advice. Athletes trust in the words I write and say. Based on that trust, they take action. I honor that trust as a sacred bond between me and the athletes reading these pages as one that is unbreakable. So rest assured, the content that follows contains the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in a pure, raw, unentangled, and unadulterated fashion all the way down to the very last sentence. As a piece of housekeeping, this audiobook comes with a free digital download, which is available at jasoncoop.com forward slash book.
That's jasoncoop spelled with a K dot com forward slash book. This download will contain all of the charts and tables, including a template of my now famous long-range plan and the rice ball recipe, as well as an index of all of the referenced scientific literature. Finally, and I am really excited about this aspect, the read of this audiobook will be interspersed with interviews from coaches and technical experts in the field. While it's one thing to list nutrition recommendations in a table, it's an entirely different thing to bring that to life with everyday athletes. And that is my aim with the interviews that are interspersed throughout this audiobook.
I'm sure you will find them fun, casual, practical, and actionable all at the same time. Needless to say, I'm excited that you're here with me on this journey. So if you're ready, willing, and able, let's get right into it. All right, this is our first official break in the read, and I thought that there's no better person I'd rather bring up to the mic than the person who's responsible for this mess in the first place, my co-author and partner in crime, Jim Ruttberg. Jim, true story, that it is all your fault that this book got written in the first place, correct? Yes, I'll take the blame for getting this ball rolling. The majority of my career has been focused on helping coaches get their message out to athletes.
Sometimes that's been ghostwriting, sometimes co-authoring, and oftentimes just editing and helping coaches organize their thoughts. Let me say that you're really good at that. You have co-authored a number of different books with several coaches, but in all seriousness, I've always considered myself a reluctant author. And you know this just as much as anybody else, because I am not at all a writer by trade. You of all people know firsthand how awful my writing can be. And I think it took a good two years of cajoling from you to get me to write this book. So why did we decide to do this in the first place all the way back in 2015 with the first edition of this book? Well, you know, every sport has its benchmark training book, or there's a small handful of books that are on every athlete's shelf.
Tim Noakes had Lore of Running. Joe Friel had the Triathletes Training Bible. Everyone has a copy of Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook. When I was coming off the second edition of the Time Crunch Cyclist, you were building a substantial following with the Ultramarathon runners, and I saw the opportunity to create the benchmark book for an emerging sport. The existing training resources for ultrarunning at that time were first-person, end-of-one, it-worked-for-me narratives. There was really nothing out there that examined the demands of the sport, the physiological adaptations needed, the nutrition required, and the range of skills that are unlike any other sport. So we decided to write it. The funny thing about training essentials for ultrarunning was that I knew it needed to be written, but that you were going to have to do a lot more of the actual writing than I was used to.
You may have been a reluctant writer at first, but I knew you had a strong voice and a passion for the subject, and that's a lot to work with. Well, and I remember an initial part of that reluctancy that I had went with this concept of the benchmark book. You mentioned all three of those books to me way back in 2015, and I thought that there was no way that I could ever, me personally, could ever live up to those books because I personally had revered them so much, and use them in my coaching practice. And so I still thought, even with all of those accolades and you trying to pump me up for it, that we might sell like five or ten copies. We'd sell a few to my mom, a few to your mom, and maybe I'd keep one as a keepsake for forever and forever. And yet here we are, we're doing a second edition, which means that the interest went far beyond our immediate family members.
Yeah, I think it's a testament to the ultrarunning community, honestly. The first edition was dense with information. Second one is even more so. But ultrarunners are a serious bunch. They see through fluff and they're happy to dig into complex topics. A lot of the new material in the second edition came from interactions with readers who just wanted to know more. Well, Jim, I really do appreciate you getting me into this mess in the first place. I'm sure the listeners and the readers of this book do as well. So let's not waste any further time. Let's get right on into it and get into the book. Thank you.