How to Train for Mountainous Races

How to Train for Mountainous Races

by | Mar 13, 2023 | Uncategorized

… when you live nowhere near the mountains

As coaches, we often get asked, “I live nowhere close to mountains or even a hill that would take me longer than 30 seconds to run up. How am I supposed to train for a race with a bunch of vertical?”
We know a lot of people don’t have access (or the time) to find terrain that would match the mountainous race they want to train for. They may have a fast marathon time, but every time they’ve tried to translate that flat, road marathon speed into a mountainous race, it just never goes according to plan.

Long story short… YES, it is definitely possible to train for hilly and mountainous races despite not having readily available access to the terrain you’ll be racing on. For today’s newsletter, Coach @SandiNypaver will take you through her tips for training for a mountainous race if you consider yourself someone who is a “flatlander.”I’ll try to put you into one of my athlete’s shoes: they live and train in Denmark, and they’re currently signed up for Transvulcania, a 72km race with 4600m (~15,000 feet) of climbing. Needless to say, Denmark isn’t exactly known for its mountains and Transvulcania is known for being an extremely difficult Ultra Marathon. Here’s how I would tell them how to prepare:

Step 1: Do Your Research 🔬You may find yourself not being able to travel to the race early enough to get a true sense of the terrain. Or, it’s not feasible to take a separate trip out to scope the route. Something like Transvulcania is on an exotic island, so you may only have race day to really take in the actual landscape. Don’t sweat it! These days, there are plenty of information available on online forums, videos, and websites for almost every ultramarathon out there, with a few exceptions (looking at you, Barkley Marathon…). We encourage our athletes to try to get a sense of the terrain by Youtubing videos of other people doing the race. Add the location of the race to your weather app weeks in advance so you can try to see what could possibly happen throughout the course of the race. Use an app like Strava so you can look at people who have done the course before. This way, you can see the gradients some of the hills are.

Step 2: The Treadmill is Your Friend 💕I’m sure this isn’t the answer you were looking for, but the treadmill can be an amazing tool for those needing to practice gaining some serious vertical. By no means am I saying that you need to run every run on this, but even if you can get a key workout in here and there on the treadmill and incorporate workouts with an incline that would mimic your race terrain, you’ll have a tremendous benefit from it. Even if you just use the treadmill to do an all uphill “power hike,” it will help you out tremendouslyNote: If you’re unsure how much vertical you should add to your training plan, or what good workouts are for ultra marathons, we explain our thoughts in detail in our Training Guide (included with all training plan purchases). Our Ultra Marathon Training Plan will give you even MORE tips and tricks for uphill and downhill efforts.

Step 3: Search far and wide for the longest hill in your area 🔎Yes, I realize this newsletter is for people who are not able to access hilly and mountainous terrain. But, I encourage you to try and find a hill or two somewhere that you could make work. Again, even if you can only get to it one day a week for a key workout, this will really help your climbing abilities. A staircase or bleachers can also substitute vertical gain. Once you’ve found your coveted hill, do hill repeats at an easy to moderate pace. On the flip side of this all, doing this will also help prepare your quads for the downhill. We often find that people underestimate the amount of stress your quads take on the downhill, and you don’t want them to give out halfway through the race!

Step 4: Before the race starts, mentally prepare yourself 🧠We offer a lot of mindset tips in our ALL IN Add On Training Guide, but to briefly touch on this topic: I know going into a race with a lot of unknowns can be super scary (such as running a mountain ultra-marathon when you’ve barely trained on mountains). Going into the race, and even during your training cycle, continually tell yourself things like: “I’m going to do the best I can.” “I’ll pay attention to where I can step.” “I’ll work and move with the terrain, and take things at my own pace.” These mantras and positive self-talk truly helps.

Step 5: When it comes to race day, start off even easier than normalOf course, you are there to race and push your body, but I want my athlete to start off quite easy, especially at a race like Transvulcania. Don’t worry what others are doing around you, but rather focus on yourself. You want to be feeling good for at least the first half of the race, otherwise you may be in for a long day. Most people take on the first climb of the race way too fast, way too hard, and way too early, and you will pay for it later on. If you start conservative at the base of the hill, you can better pace yourself all the way up. Furthermore, you can always speed up if you decide to go slow at the beginning of the hill. If you start too fast, well, you may be regretting it halfway through.

Even though it’s easier said than done, try to view running a mountainous ultra as a challenge if coming from little-to-no mountain experience. I know it’s uncomfortable, but I’ve grown the most in life with these types of situations. Going in with a positive mindset can be the difference of you walking and wanting to quit versus feel good and taking the hills at a good tempo.
Running a marathon is no easy feat.

Running a marathon is no easy feat.

by | Mar 6, 2023 | Uncategorized

It takes months of preparation, training, and planning in order to execute the race you would like to run. But what if you’ve never run a marathon before? What is there to know?

This week, Coach Sage will take you through everything he wish he knew before running his first marathon. Many of these tips can also apply to even the most experienced runners, so hopefully there’s something in here that you will find helpful.
First, let’s start with the “prerequisites” that come into play even before you get to race day.I tell all of my athletes that they need to be following a training plan. Typically, these range from 12-16 weeks long, and that’s not even counting the aerobic base you need prior to beginning the training plan.Use our FREE Aerobic Base Building Plan to help build your aerobic base.Browse our Marathon Training Plans and find a training plan that works best for you. From very beginner, to very advanced, we cover all experience levels!

It’s smart to factor in a half marathon race midway through your marathon training plan. This will help you see where your fitness is and allow you to get the feel for what race day may be like.

Now let’s jump into what I wish I knew before running my first marathon:

Tip #1 – Understand how a marathon can differ than a shorter distance race. 
The marathon is such a fickle distance and unlike anything you’ll run if you’ve only ever done up to a half marathon. Don’t get me wrong, even a 800m or 1600m race on the track is difficult, but when it comes to 26.2 miles, there are more factors that come into play. You start getting into a zone where things feel different. The pain and fatigue manifests itself in such a different way that you are going to have to control yourself up until mile 20 in order to not bonk the last 6.2 miles. Your long runs will hopefully teach you how to pace yourself, as well as give you a sense of what your body is capable of when you start getting to that mile 20 mark.

Tip #2 – Don’t go trying anything new (nutrition wise) the week leading up to the race!
 Now is not the time to start Googling “food to make you go faster in a marathon,” only for you to come across some very… eh…interesting… food/nutrition options. Stay consistent with what your body is used to while focusing on whole, plant based foods. One thing you can try is drinking water with some electrolytes mixed in. There’s no need to drink gallons and gallons of water leading up to the race, as this can actually lead to overhydrating yourself. You can, in fact, drink too much!

Tip #3 – The Morning of the Race: When it comes to race morning, I always like to wake up about three (3) hours prior to the start. This partially depends on transportation, but I also want to make sure I get my breakfast in with plenty of time for me to digest it. As for other #ProTips I’ve learned over the years:
Be prepared to wait in looooong porty potty lines. There never seems to be enough for how many people there are! Try to think of alternate (and legal) ways to relieve yourself if the line is too long (i.e., gas stations, getting close accommodation to the start line, etc). Bring a trash bag or old, used sweatshirt that you can bring to the start line in case it’s cold and you’re forced to stand and wait. When it gets closer to the race time, you can just throw it away (typically there are donation boxes for old clothing, or give it to the person who came to the start line with you, if any).

Tip #4 – For your first marathon, I simply want your goal to be to finish and have a positive experience. Yes, it’s great to have a goal finish time in mind, but for most first-timers, the primary goal is to finish. The way to achieve this is to start a pace that you feel completely comfortable yet. If it feels too easy in the first mile, just remember, you have another 25.2 to go. So you’re probably right where to need to be!

Tip #5 – Fuel consistently and continuously throughout the race.
 You’ll be working really hard throughout the race. What I mean by fueling consistently and continuously is that I take a couple of gels, namely Spring Energy (enter discount code “Sage” for 10% off), each hour of the race, for the whole race. Hopefully, you were practicing fueling on your long runs and training runs, but you want to be eating and/or drinking some sort of carbohydrate for the duration of the race. There should also be aid station tables for you along the course to stop and grab some food or liquid. You can usually find information about where these are in your marathon brochure, or you can try to ask a race organizer/volunteer before the race. NOTE: If you like a personal nutrition brand, be sure to bring your own! It totally varies what type of snacks and drinks the aid stations will carry. I usually carry a handheld bottle that can store several gels, or you can also use a running belt. Here’s another #ProTip I learned over the years: If you decide to go through an aid station for fluid, there will typically be two tables. One will be water, and the other will be an electrolyte-type drink (e.g., Gatorade). You can choose what you want depending on what you’re feeling, but I actually pinch the top of the cup to create a spout. Most people will grab it like a normal cup, but that will just result in more water spilling.

Tip #6 (Bonus tip) – Treat Mile 20 (32km) as if you’re only halfway through the race. If you’re ahead of your goal coming into mile 20, you can easily lose all of that in the last 6 miles (10km). If you can go into mile 20 feeling good, give everything you’ve got to finish strong.

I hope you found some of these tips useful. I wish I could say that these tips will make it feel so much easier, but the reality is, is that running a marathon is tough no matter who you are. But I think that if you follow these methods you can improve your chances of succeeding. Finishing a marathon is an amazing accomplishment, so I’d love to hear how your first marathon went!
How to Fuel Before a Race or Morning Run

How to Fuel Before a Race or Morning Run

by | Mar 1, 2023 | Uncategorized

This question came up from an athlete the other week and they asked Coaches Sandi and Sage, “I do a lot of workouts on an empty stomach because I have to be at work at 9:00am, and I like getting my run in before work. For some of the long runs, I need to wake up at 4:00am in order to fit in. Sometimes I take a gel or two, but other times I run on an empty stomach. So I guess my questions are:
· Is it OK to run on an empty stomach? If not, what should I eat?· What should I eat the day before a race? What about the morning of?”
We (Coach Sage and Coach Sandi) want to preface that we are not nutritionists, but we have done a lot of research into how an athlete should fuel and approach nutrition and training. This is also personal experience from decades of experimenting and tweaking our nutrition, so know that something that works for you may depend on your typical diet and routine. This same thing may not work for us, and vice versa.

However, we’ll address question #1 first – is it okay to run on an empty stomach?
First, I (Coach Sage) would frequently run on an emptier stomach that were relatively shorter. This always worked out fine for me on these types of runs. Generally speaking, you’re going to be low on carbs first thing in the morning, but you should have enough glycogen stored in your muscles and liver to be able to run for a fairly long time without needing any sort of fuel source.

That being said, if you have a long run on tap or a high intensity workout planned, it’s going to be important to have enough fuel to get the right amount of intensity in for the workout
. If you don’t have a breakfast that has some carbohydrates in it, you may bonk pretty bad if you have to throw down a high-intensity 15 mile long run. You can experiment what type of fuel works best for you before these workouts, but you’re most likely not going to need to a slam a big cinnamon roll. Realistically, a banana and a cup of oatmeal would be sufficient to fuel you for a higher inte🥖nsity effort in the morning. Try to let it digest (some would say up to two hours) before heading out on a run, but this can vary person-to-person. However, a 6-8 mile run with no calories beforehand is totally doable (9-12 kms). We always encourage our athletes to have a glass of water before they go out for their run, whether they eat or not, because you usually wake up slightly dehydrated.
If you’re still struggling to eat a breakfast for a high intensity workout or long run, here are some other ideas:
· 🍌 Eating a banana or a few dates – this is light on the stomach and quick to digest.· Granola bar· Half a cup of oatmeal (i.e., a smaller portion of oatmeal than what you would typically eat for a full breakfast)· 🍞 One piece of toast with peanut butter
If at all possible, try to plan your easy runs on days you know you might not be able to eat anything before you go. Then for workouts, another reason we encourage athletes to eat is because we see them hit their prescribed paces easier because of the carbs they consumed. In the end, and like we alluded to earlier, it’s important to experiment and see what works best for you.
This leads us into our next question, which is: What should one eat the morning of a race?When Coach Sage used race a lot of cross country and half-marathon distance races, I would always eat something about 2.5-3 hours before the race. The goal was to make it something simple, easy to digest, and most importantly, something I was used to. Don’t be going to that yummy looking restaurant down the street pre-race! Nuh uh. It should be something you’ve regularly had in your diet and you know your stomach can tolerate running on it. I would aim for something high in carbs, and fairly low in fat. So a lot of the breakfast ideas we mentioned earlier (oatmeal, toast, etc) are great options, but you can probably have a bigger portion of them if you give your body ample time to digest it.
We’ve covered breakfast, but let’s back up a bit – what should one eat the night before the race?
I (Coach Sage) like to eat my dinner no later than 12 hours before the race, just so I can make sure everything is cleared out before the gun goes off… if you know what I mean 💩. Again, I use a similar mentality for what I do with my breakfast: keep it simple! I eat something I know my body can handle, I’m not experimenting in the kitchen the night before, and I try to make sure it’s carb heavy and lighter on the fats. The will help me wake up feeling good, not bloated, and confident my GI system won’t pull any surprises on me mid-race.
Whew! Are you hungry now? I think that’s all we have for this week, but as always, feel free to email us at support@higherrunning.com if there’s a future newsletter topic that you would like us to cover!
What You Need to Do to Improve Your 10km Time

What You Need to Do to Improve Your 10km Time

by | Feb 6, 2023 | Uncategorized



If you’re looking to go sub 40-minutes or even sub 50-minutes in the 10km, then this newsletter is for you! Coach Sage Canaday will be giving you specific workouts and running tips to lower your 10km time. The examples he uses will be tailored towards those trying to go sub 40 minutes in the 10km, but know that a lot of the workouts and pieces of advice can also be applied if you’re trying to get a 10km run below 50, 45, or even 35 minutes. Even if you’re training for a 5km, this is all information that can still be applied, too. Here we go! 🙌

Let’s start with some simple math before we get started. If you’re aiming to run a sub 40 minute 10km, your race pace is going to be 6:26min/mile or 4min/km. This is important to keep in mind as we detail the workouts and pieces of training advice. 

 STEP 1: 
The first step is one we’ve preached in numerous other newsletters and training talks… can you guess? It’s to build up your weekly mileage (i.e., aerobic base). Even though it seems so simple, consistent training, the better stamina and endurance you’re going to have to run a faster 10km. It’s important to notice that this aerobic base building phase applies to whether you’re wanting to run a faster 5km or 100 miler. You can’t go wrong building up your weekly mileage in a progressive manner. Here’s the practical way to do this: if you’ve been consistently running 3-4 times per week, try to start running 4-5 times per week (or even 6 times per week if you have the time!). You’ll notice your body start to adapt to the training load, and naturally, you’re aerobic base will help you run faster. Not all runs need to be super long or hard, it’s the consistency that matters. If you’re aiming for a sub 40 minute 10km, most “easy paced” runs will be at 8 minute/mile pace or 5 minute/km pace.

BONUS: If you are at the aerobic base building phase of your training, check out our FREE Aerobic Base Building Training Plan. 
 
 STEP 2: 
A second point I want to note is just because you’re going to be running 10km, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be running longer than 10km for your long runs! Many long distance 10km runners will work up their long runs to 16-20km on training days. Don’t limit yourself to only running up to 10km because the extra mileage during your long runs will help contribute to your stamina and leg strength. Note: this same rule typically is not applied towards longer distances like marathons or ultras. If you’re training for a marathon, one does not usually run over 26.2 miles during training, or even full marathon for that matter.  
 
 STEP 3: 
Now let’s move on to the fun stuff, the speed workouts needed to run a fast 10km! Speed workouts don’t always need to be done on the track, and they should never be “all out” type efforts that have you laying on the ground gasping for air. However, they are always going to be substantially faster than your goal 10km race pace. Start by doing what we call “economy” or “efficiency” workouts. Typically, these take the form of 400m or 800m repeats. If a sub 40 minute 10km is your goal, you’d be targeting 2:55 for 800m. For 400m repeats, start by doing 4x400m at 1:24 per 400m with a 2-minute rest in between. You can then work your way up to 6x400m and finally 8x400m. As for how these should feel, it should be a medium-hard type of workout. During the actual speed portion, it’s going to feel really hard, but the rest in between should hopefully be able to alleviate some of the pain and get you ready for the next one.
 
 STEP 4: 
You then move from “economy” or “efficiency” workouts to tempo workouts. The bread-and-butter tempo workout we prescribe is the “20-minute Tempo.” You can warm up for a few kilometers, and then you jump into a 20-minute tempo run with a pace that is very close to your 10km goal pace. So again, if you’re aiming for a sub 40-minute 10km, you would be running this tempo run at about 6:36/mile or 4:08/km. This workout should not feel all out, but more so help your legs feel what it’s going to be like to run near your goal race pace for the 10km.
 
 STEP 5: 
To bring it all together, the final type of workout you will need to do are V02 max type of workouts. And yes, these are the workouts that are going to sting compared to the others. They are aerobic capacity type of workouts where you will be running the reps at 5km pace or even faster in order to get your heart rate up to 100%. The way to implement these are through longer efforts, such as kilometer or mile repeats at a high intensity interval pace. For a runner aiming at the sub 40-minute 10km, a sample workout would be 4 x 1 mile (1600m) at 6:10 pace with a 4-minute rest in between. Another workout could be 6-8 x 1000m at 3:50/km with a 2-minute rest in between. These are tough workouts, but it’s not like you need to be doing them every other day. Realistically, you be throwing in one of these hard workouts every week or two.
 
Pulling this all together, you’re going to have 80% of your running be the easy, base building type of runs. Throughout the training cycle, you’ll start to sprinkle in economy workouts, then tempo workouts, and ending with the V02 max type of efforts to help your heart pump more build to your working muscles.
Your Training Questions Answered

Your Training Questions Answered

by | Jan 31, 2023 | Uncategorized

Today, we wanted to talk you through some of our most common questions we get about training as well as our own training plans.When you don’t have one-on-one coaching, it’s not always easy knowing what to do in instances of sickness, missing a workout, or having to adapt a training plan. Hopefully these answers will help guide you in your training!

Note: This is a longer read, so we’ve highlighted the questions in red, so you can skim for something you’ve always wondered yourself. 
 
Q: What do I do if I get a 16-week training plan, but I only have 13 or 14 weeks until the race?

A: This partially depends on your overall fitness level. If you already feel like you have a good base and you don’t need a base, just remove the first couple of weeks. For most of our training plans, the first couple of weeks are focused on easier mileage, with maybe a lighter workout every couple of days. This is more so to prepare you for the weeks to come and make sure you have the base needed to really thrive using the training plan.
 
Now, say you feel like you don’t have a good base and you need those first couple of weeks to build your aerobic base back up. Our suggestion would be to look at the plan, ask yourself what you feel like are your running strengths (e.g., good at long, sustained tempo work), then ask yourself what week of the training plan would best suit your strengths, and those are the weeks that you could look at skipping. Focus on the weeks that are addressing your weaknesses that you feel like you need to work on.
 
It’s important to understand that with a question like this, there’s a lot of individual variables at play, such as the aforementioned aerobic base and your strengths and weaknesses as a runner. For Higher Running training plans, we usually try to help you feel as ready for the training plan as possible by showing you the prerequisites even before you purchase the plan (e.g., To use this plan, we suggest you’ve comfortably been running 25-30 miles per week all easy pace to be able to handle the volume). Don’t feel like you have to follow the training plan exactly to a tee, as they’re designed to be flexible, but these are all things to consider when trying to complete the training plan in a shorter amount of time.
 
Q: My main goal is to race a 100km race at the end of my 16-week training plan, but I also want to do a 50km race halfway through the training plan. What should I do in that situation?
 
(Or in situations where I have a B race halfway through training for my A race – choose you distances of choice)
 
A: We get this question a lot, and our thought is that even after a 50km, you’ll have to take recovery seriously. This means the week after the 50km you’re going to have to take it easy. You shouldn’t worry about the workouts or prescribed mileage, as you might not even run for most of the week. If you do run, focus on easy mileage. Then, your 2nd week post 50km, this is where you have to know yourself and be honest how you’re feeling. Some people may be able to jump in right where they left off. Others may still need to take it easy or reduce the volume of both the workouts and prescribed mileage.
 
You have to be really careful in the recovery and honest with yourself. Did you race this super hard and it’s going to result in 2-3 weeks of residual fatigue? It’s important to ask yourself what your true goal is, so if the 100km is your A goal, and the 50km is more of the “tune up” race, you could just use the race as a training effort like a long-run workout. (But it will still be a super hard workout regardless). Ultimately, don’t set expectations what you want your training to look like for the next 1-2 weeks post 50km race. Don’t try to push through the pain because you think it’ll help, because it will most likely end up hurting your 100km performance if you start things up too quickly again.
 
Q: If I get injured somewhere in the middle of a training plan, how do I come back? Do I start from zero? Do I jump in right where I left off?

A: This is going to vary from person-to-person and injury-to-injury. If you’re injured for a long time (several weeks), you’ll probably have to start from the beginning or even take a couple of weeks to even start truly training again. However, if you only have to take only a couple of days off, you might be able to jump in where you left off. Say you take off Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and feel good enough to run Thursday, you can probably treat it as an easy to moderate run and reduce the volume of the run. Then for the next couple of days you still would reduce the volume and intensity of the run/workout.
 
Q: Okay, that makes sense about injury, but what about getting sick?!

A: This will vary depending on the sickness. If it’s just a cold and you have to take a day or two off, don’t worry about losing too much fitness. If it’s something more serious like the flu and you have to take a week or more off, you will probably have to ease back into things with reduced run volume and intensity. Depending on when the sickness or injury occurs, you could also just do an extended taper leading up to the race if your cautious and being honest with yourself.
 
All in all, if you happen to miss a few workouts or runs because of injury, sickness, or even life, it’s not going to totally derail your training. Yes, it might take you a couple of days to get back into the swing of things, but we’ve actually seen a lot of people improve significantly after a few extra days off because of the rest their body needed.
 
Q: Should I be weightlifting? If so, how would I incorporate this into my run?

A: There can be a lot of different approaches to this, but we can tell you what we typically do.
 
We like to do our strength/lifting sessions the same day as a speed workout. The optimal way to do it would be to first do the hard run, and then the weightlifting session later on in the same day. This way you’re keeping your hard days hard, and easy days easy.
 
Other programs say to fit in the weight training when you can, no matter where it falls. Again, we don’t do this ourselves, but you can always try it to see if it works for you. The one concern we have here is that if you do a strength training session, you may be too fatigued to fully benefit from a quality run session later in the week. Another potential risk we see with this method is your body being too tired from weightlifting, resulting in improper form during your speed sessions, and ultimately ending in injury.
 
We would say there is a difference for lighter core work sessions. These tend to not be too strenuous on the body, so we will fit these in whenever is convenient (usually aiming for 2-3x a week). Just know it’s okay to experiment with what method works best for you, we are more so just telling you what we’ve found to be successful in our own running.
 
Q: If something comes up in the middle of the week and I have to change my runs around, how do I go about that?

A: Our #1 tip for this is to never stack back-to-back speed workouts or even back-to-back long run workouts. Always have one easy day in between these key sessions. If it’s a really hard workout, you might even need 2-3 easy days in between. We know that the days we’ve scheduled a key speed session or long run in the training plan isn’t always going to work for everybody’s schedule. If you are losing some training days and/or time, you may have to skip a workout here and there. But our training plans are designed where a single workout is not designed to be “the” workout you need to do in order to make gains.