View all show notes and timestamps on the KoopCast website.
Episode overview:
If you are not planning out your season by now you should be! CTS coaches Cliff Pittman and AJW discuss how to set up your season with the right anchor points, how to schedule a B race and how to keep the focus on the things that are the most important.
Episode highlights:
(9:02) Western States classic buildup: Way Too Cool 50k, American River 50, Miwok 100k, Memorial Day training camp
(17:02) Koop’s framework: identifying key goal races, building an ideal long range plan before modifying it to incorporate supporting races, camps, and life circumstances, knowing where to make compromises
(30:00) Recon the crux of the course: challenges with course recon, Western States example and trails blocked by snow, example from the first year of Cocodona, confidence boost
Additional resources:
SUBSCRIBE to Research Essentials for Ultrarunning
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible.
Information on coaching-https://www.trainright.com
Koop’s Social Media: Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop
View all show notes and timestamps on the KoopCast website.
Episode overview:
If you are not planning out your season by now you should be! CTS coaches Cliff Pittman and AJW discuss how to set up your season with the right anchor points, how to schedule a B race and how to keep the focus on the things that are the most important.
Episode highlights:
(9:02) Western States classic buildup: Way Too Cool 50k, American River 50, Miwok 100k, Memorial Day training camp
(17:02) Koop’s framework: identifying key goal races, building an ideal long range plan before modifying it to incorporate supporting races, camps, and life circumstances, knowing where to make compromises
(30:00) Recon the crux of the course: challenges with course recon, Western States example and trails blocked by snow, example from the first year of Cocodona, confidence boost
Additional resources:
SUBSCRIBE to Research Essentials for Ultrarunning
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible.
Information on coaching-https://www.trainright.com
Koop’s Social Media: Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop
Trail and Ultra Runners. What is going on? Welcome to another episode of the Coupecast. As always, I am your humble host, coach Jason Koop, and, if you haven't been paying attention, the season is here. Most of the lotteries have transpired and those that have not transpired are just about to, and I know many of you out there are curious about how to set your season up, and I have always been a huge advocate of giving yourself long periods of time to train. So, with that as a theme, I got our coaches together for a great roundtable on how to set your season up and how to structure the season so that you can make the most out of your hard-earn training time.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the podcast today, cts coaching director Cliff Pittman, as well as longtime stalwart of the trail running community, cts coach AJW, and we go through the entirety of it and how we would set it up for our athletes based on any number of different situations. Are you going to have a big winter season that includes Schemo? Do you need to include strength training? Are you racing early in the year or later in the year? Do you have really big things planned? Where should you set up your training camps and if you need a heat training intervention for one of the hot weather races? Where and how to actually include that. Get your pens and your pieces of paper and all of your pencils and recording materials out for this one.
Speaker 1:You guys, it is jam packed and I hope that, going forward, after you listen to this podcast, you have some sort of template to work with for how to actually set your season up. All right, folks, with that out of the way, I am getting right out of the way. Here's my conversation with coaches AJW and Cliff Pittman, all about how to set your season up. Ajw on brand Is that a tropical John shirt? Before we get into this too much, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:Okay, perfect. It's Friday afternoon in the desert, you know Very on brand, since we're going to talk about how to navigate the races. You're talking about where you showed up with a prize that people get at the end of the Western States 100.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right, all right.
Speaker 1:So I want to put this podcast together right now, it being very timely. This is going to come up, or it's going to hit the airwaves, so to speak, last week of December, probably first week in January, and we've all been through this cycle before. This is a great confluence of a lot of different things. First thing is the lotteries have all transpired, or most of them have transpired. Leadville is kind of one of the last ones, and Wasatch actually might be in January too. Is that right? Ajw can?
Speaker 2:you remember? Yeah, I think so. I think it's first weekend in January.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they all start to confluence at the same time and you have, in combination with that, the very prototypical new year where everybody starts to, hey, this is a fresh start, and it's some sort of you know imaginary line of demarcation between one point and the next and I have to start training. And then you have the reality set in of there is a timeline at a view right, you have either gotten into your goal race or not, and we're going to go through how to navigate that process. But that automatically creates a deadline in your head and people start kind of like pushing the panic button in terms of, oh my gosh, I only have next months to train, quote unquote. And then I just kind of came up with one final factor that we haven't been through yet. You have the holiday season, where people are typically the laziest.
Speaker 1:So, all of those things combined, it's quite topical that this is going to come out last week of December 1st, first week of January, we're going to talk about how to set up a season and I want to kind of start out with this framework of how, if you have your goal races picked out, one of the first things that we do as coaches and that we also encourage athletes to do, who are self-coach, is to start figuring out what are the other anchor points that you are going to put into the year.
Speaker 1:So I just got into the Wasatch 100, which is, you know, the day before or the weekend before Labor Day or Friday before the weekend before Labor Day every year, and that creates an end point. That's typically not the only thing that athletes will do throughout the year. They'll do buildup, races and camps and all of these other things. And I want to start with that process first, in terms of how we would go about figuring out what the A, what the anchor points are. Maybe we can identify that first and then be strategically where they should actually be kind of relative to the race. So, ajw, you want to take the first kind of crack at that and go over what your anchor point list or checklist would be when you've got an athlete that has just identified their goal race.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that's. I love this. This is a great starting point and I think for a whole, for a host of reasons let me let me start with Western States athletes, so that those athletes have just gotten into the race, you know three, four weeks ago, and and the. You immediately sit down and you have that phone call with the athlete. Oh my gosh, I got in. This is incredible. Now what it really is a, now what and, and and. My list really is is three. Is is three things. The first is okay.
Speaker 2:What is the six next six months of your life look like outside of running and training? Do you have a wedding you have to go to? Do you have baptisms? Are there major work trips that have already been scheduled? Let's talk about your actual life for these next six months. And are the those things that are etched in stone, those things that might be able to be moved around, or those things you know? Because when your six months build up to Western States, it's not the time to you know, do it, do it yourself, re-roofing of your house, for example, right, so if you can put that off until the fall, you want to do that. So that's that sort of topic number one, just big, zooming out. What does your life look like for the next six months, to the extent that you can, that you can predict it.
Speaker 2:The second is definitely those anchor points of what else can you do. You know, back in the old days when half the people who ran Western States were sort of from California, everybody did way too cool American River and Newark and the Memorial Day Camp and ran Western States. Well, guess what? That formula which is, say, a 50K in March, a 50-milish in April, 100k or something like that in early May, the training still works as a general kind of anchor point. Obviously, not everybody's going to do all the three of those races, but you know, looking at, you know what's a local 50K in Texas you can do in March and a 50-miler, and if there's not a 50-miler in New Jersey, maybe find a 12-hour race or something. So find those anchor point events that you can run as training races.
Speaker 2:We talk a lot about training races, dial in things like gear and shoes and pacing and those kinds of things. So finding those anchor points around that, the first topic, which is what your life looks like, and then the third big one is all the logistics I really want people to get that stuff done now. You're Airbnb who's going to crew and pace you, your flight reservations, if you can do that this early. You know all of those kinds of things and making sure that you have a backup plan. You know everybody wants to pace somebody at Western States but invariably someone cancels at the last minute or you know. So building up that whole sort of thing so that again you can control the controllables there are going to be some things that are unpredictable, that are going to happen. You can't control if there's snow or there's heat or there's, you know, some other sort of complication. But you can control who your crew is going to be, where you're going to stay, how you're going to get to and from. You know those basic things. So once you do those.
Speaker 2:Oh and by the way, so 3B is demanding the training camp. We've talked about this enough Whether it's going. Ideally they would go to Memorial Day training camp. You know 70 miles in three days. If they can't do that, find a place, put that on the calendar right now, somewhere between six, seven to five weeks before the goal event, you're going to do a three-day significant training camp and we want to get that on the calendar. You want to check that out with the spouse and all of that. So those are my layers.
Speaker 1:Okay, I have a question about the prototypical Western State setup and so go over the race framework again like what two races? And kind of with an emphasis on the timeline, that they are to Western.
Speaker 2:States, right? So again, this is sorry everybody, this is old school AJW, right?
Speaker 1:So that's why I'm having to clarify. There's people that are under the age of 40. They're listening to this podcast.
Speaker 2:So in Northern California there's a classic 50K race called Way to Cool. That's got about 20, 24 of the miles are on the Western States course. It's the first weekend in March, sometimes it rains, sometimes it's cold, sometimes it's the first warm day of the year, but it's a 50K that a lot of fast people go to and it's pretty flat. I think it has maybe 28 or 3,000, 2800 to 3,000 feet of vertical and the section of the Western States course that it's on is the sort of last several miles of it. The next one is the American River 50, which is one of the oldest 50 milers in the country, second only, I think, to JFK 50. That's about a month after the Way to Cool 50K. So you run that 50 miler.
Speaker 2:And then there's Miwa 100K which is out in the Marin headlands down in the Bay Area. That's 100K rolling with a few steep climbs and descents and some really good quad pounding descents on these Marin trails that are notoriously sort of hard packed dirt which are very similar to what you're going to find at Western States. So that architecture for somebody. One of my athletes who ran Western States last year and in 22 and change lives in Tracy, california. He just did that. He did Way to Cool American River, miwa, the training camp, and it was that. Not everybody can do that, but some version of that is really, I think, a good place to start in this kind of conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the point that I really wanted to drive home is that this original structure was kind of proliferated by the very well-renowned West Coast bias of the Western States 100, where a lot of the athletes, they lived on the West Coast, they had access to these races. They could race in March, which is not available to a lot of the people in the US and has a very prototypical and stereotypical kind of stair-step fashion to it, where you go from faster, lower volume races to 50 mile or to 100 K and gradually kind of gets closer and closer to the demands of the race itself. It doesn't have to be exactly that, but that is some sort of blue. In fact, if athletes are home and listening to this and wanted to kind of draw this out, you could draw it out just like that, just like that, and then look for the analogs that actually you have access to. So maybe it's not way too cool, maybe it's another 50k in March or maybe the early April time frame. Maybe it's not American River in April, but it's another 50 mile that you have access to in the early April type of type of time frame. Maybe it's not the Western States training camp because you can't get to it. But it's something that is analogous to that, that is, in that time frame, the anchor points and the where they are relative to the race, you can almost kind of shift around.
Speaker 1:You could do the same thing for the Ludville Trail 100 right, in terms of finding similar anchor points with a similar Time frame or time span to the race and then just working back from there. That's that. That's a really, really reasonable way to start. There's a reason why a lot of very successful runners did that time and time and time again because and it's, you know, maybe it's part tradition or part history and part coincidence, all kind of like wrapped into one. But even if I were just designing it without that, you know, without having that knowledge base, if that's what a lot of people did I would look at that and go that's a reasonable ramp up into a hundred mile race. That's in, that's in June. Sure, you can nitpick the exact weekend and all that other kind of stuff, but you know you've got that as if you have that as an initial basis point. That is not a bad way to go about it.
Speaker 2:Well, and I would. I want to turn to Cliff here for a second here, because cliffs, you know, favorite race or at least a race that's been kind of one of his anchor points over the last few years is Arkansas Traveler's first weekend in October in the Mid-South. You can, I'm sure he can, look at the race calendar for that region Arkansas, oklahoma, tennessee, missouri, you know and find similar, find a similar pattern of, say, a 50k and now it's gonna be hot and sticky probably. But you have a chance of it being hot and sticky for Arkansas Traveler anyway, something like in the 50k variety and what would that be? Counting back, probably April, may, something in the 50 mile ish variety in late May, june and then something in the hundred K or thereabouts in July or Sneaking into early August and some of those events. You know that they don't. They don't take an off season in the Mid-South when it's hot.
Speaker 2:You know, there's always there's always something that they can find to to get them ready for Grinding through the Ozarks in early October.
Speaker 1:That's true. You want to face, you want to, you want to face. Shift this to like the races that you're familiar with.
Speaker 3:Well, you have the entire Arkansas Ultra running Association like race series per se and it's almost like the races are even Scheduled and designed as a full build-up to Arkansas Traveler. So you're absolutely right, you have a race just about every month that can coincide and Prepare you for that, like you know, arkansas Super Bowl. But I was gonna say while you were talking that, thinking about athletes just outside, maybe here in Arkansas, or think about Florida, all the different layers of complexity for participation in these. You know West Coast or you know even Leadville 100 races, because you have to do, we have to consider course recon and the you know the environment which you can't get so an athlete in Florida.
Speaker 3:Course recon should be part of that like organizational structure when you're planning out the year. If you can in your schedule get out and you're say you're racing in the leadville 100, can you get out to the Rockies at least once? Because when you get up to altitude you're gonna get, you're gonna get punched in the face. And if you can experience that before race day and get that out of your system and know and anticipate what you're getting into, that's one layer of Unknown that you don't have to cross on race day 100% and you know there are gonna be a lot of athletes that come into any of these training processes with an Unideal situation, either an unideal time frame or an unideal location.
Speaker 1:That's like one of the top three questions that I get asked every single week. I live in C level Location, city X, and I'm training for altitude race. Why, what like? What do I do? And I mean once again people you know, not hardly anybody, unless your professional athlete has the luxury of relocating to the race course for eight weeks or doing an altitude camp or Sometimes even doing these training camps, right that that you know Andy has kind of hammered on his athletes the last a few years. Sometimes that's at your home location because of any number of different circumstances, right, just life and you're a busy professional and things like that. You're just gonna run around your house for 50k every single day. Let's try to carve. Let's try to carve that piece out of it. So I encourage the athletes that are, that are listening to this, to like Realize that we're pragmatists and we're we are realists in this, like we coach very real, everyday people that live with a lot of these, a lot of these different constraints.
Speaker 1:I'll go through my framework a little bit and I think it's probably a little bit the end goal is gonna be the same that the Steps that I go through might be a little bit counterintuitive to most people, and so I want to take the time to kind of really go go thoroughly through them. So the first thing is is, once I've identified and what's the athlete has identified, whatever their apex race or races are one or two, two might be the most, maybe it's three in certain circumstance, but it kind of doesn't matter once I've identified those, I go through the process of Collecting all of those things that Andy just mentioned. So what are the supporting races gonna be? What are the camps gonna be, what are any sort of adjunctive activities like sauna, training or life activities gonna be? I Kind of gather all of those and I put them in a shoebox not a literal shoebox but like a metaphorical planning shoebox and I kind of put it to the side. You know, go through why I put it to the side in a second. But yeah, I gather all those first.
Speaker 1:The very next thing I do is I completely put the horse blinders on and I build the long-range plan based on, though, those apex races and where the athlete is at. So I go through that architecture of this is when I want them to be super high volume, this is when I want them to be super high intensity, and this is how it ebbs and flows throughout the year. Then I Layer on all of those things that have that are in the shoebox put in all of the the supporting races, put in all of the things where Training is not going to be conducive right to have a son graduating, or there's some sort of epic work project for our accountants, right. It's usually April, like right around tax season, that they get super busy and training is really hard. I then start to layer on those things and then modify the long-range plan from those kind of conflicts and Inevitably it changes.
Speaker 1:It changes in any kind of different number of ways. But the reason that I go through that is is because I want to start with the ideal first and make sure I've got my Priorities correct for the athlete. This is priority a. I really I'm gonna try not to move this because this is really important, and you mentioned the training camps. I'd be an example of something that's really important. We really want to make sure that we get these things done and then they're done in the right context and in the right time of Year.
Speaker 1:But the reason I go through that kind of like two-step process putting on the horse blinders and creating the long-range plan and then Layering on all those other things is because I want to be really really, really clear about what the training priorities are and what things. I'm like you know what, if I have to compromise this a little bit, I'm kind of, I'm kind of okay with that and then that way, when there is More to bite off, then you can actually chew, you know what to compromise and you can explain it to the athlete. This is why this area isn't emphasized as much. Don't feel bad about it, because we're gonna emphasize this other area that matters a whole lot more.
Speaker 3:I've found that that plane, that planning process, is not only just more effective Because of what I just went through you've got the priority straight but then the athlete has more confidence in it because they know that you've gone through this kind of like rank order of Of things that they kind of like need to do that's a really good point, you know, as we feel like our coach after relationships is so much more like a collaborative effort and there's a lot of give and take on both sides, yeah, but whenever you go through that priority like if you prioritize, like this is an ideal scenario to prepare you for the demands of this particular event and then interject in like the life circumstances you just have a really good framework to kind of go back and forth and say like well, we don't want, like the life circumstances, to completely dictate the training process or else who knows what type of end product we're gonna have yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, sometimes my athletes don't even know that I go through the horse blind or piece of it, they just see the ultimate outcome right. So I want to make I want to be clear that I'm not being flippant or indifferent to all of those life circumstances. I'm just putting them to the side for just the initial part of the training process and then Incorporating them back into it and seeing how well, like where the conflicts are. Can I take advantage of certain times of year? Does it make more sense to do a really big training camp and you know, to use your Western States analogy, ajw Instead of on Memorial Day, the week before Memorial Day? Right, if I can do a training camp, I'll take a training camp. Then is just as well.
Speaker 1:Who's to say which one is the better? You know, kind of timeframe, absolutely so. So my point with all that is is yes, absolutely, you are a hundred percent taking those things into consideration. But work from the ideal backwards versus starting out at least that's the way I like to do it versus starting out with all the Constraints and letting that blind you to the things that are the most important right, I would, I would jump in and say so.
Speaker 2:A Western States athlete that I just recently had a sort of our big picture planning call with. You know, right out of the gate he was like I can't get out for Memorial Day. You know, there's I've got a family reunion or some some. I was like that's fine, that's fine, let's just find three days, maybe the week before, just like you said, coot, maybe the week before, you know, maybe a couple. It doesn't even have to be a weekend, but let's find three days. You know, we established those three days right now and and will that'll be an anchor point and I guess, I guess, yeah, I would agree with you on the horse blinders, because there is Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know, I've been coaching Certain athletes for certain singular races, especially Western States, now long enough. I don't want to say it's one side, it's, you know, one size fits all, but there is a formula that works and, yeah, there's some, there's some wiggle room within that formula, but it's not, it's not a ton of wiggle room. And so, whether you're a, you know, whether you're a top tenor or a break 24 or just chasing the cutoffs, there's not a ton of wiggle room. And and in the grand scheme of things, six months is actually not that long a time. No, right, when you do, you always six months, we call it a long-range plan.
Speaker 2:But six months is almost a medium-range plan, I mean for some, when you think of, for example, you know the nor Norwegian cross-country skiers who work on four-year plans, right, but I think that I think that having the, having the understanding and, like you said, the athlete made they, they don't necessarily Need to know all the details of what the horse blinder exercise has yielded. But you, as the coach know, there are gonna be Probably six things, whether it's a single day race, a training camp at this or that, that are, in my view, are kind of the non-negotiables if you want to succeed or, you know, achieve your goals in this race. I mean, I'm telling you right now these are the things, and so when you're having that conversation in December, or if it's for traveler, you know, in February, you're far enough in advance where you can do that, but you're close enough to the race where you're like, you know, we don't have a whole lot of time to waste here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's usually a part of the prioritization list and the stereotypical things that go into that are the training camps, as you mentioned.
Speaker 1:And also, usually I'll set some sort of like hey, I wanna see you average 14 hours a week or 18 hours a week, whatever is reasonable based on their architecture during this timeframe, and it kind of puts them on notice that, okay, then in that time, like if I have a really big life event happen, I need to tell my coach that in advance so that we can shift that timeframe around, cause you don't wanna you know you don't wanna merge together these high life stress timeframes with the high training stress timeframes.
Speaker 1:And if you can forecast them a little bit, to the best of the extent, sometimes it's better to do those high volume stuff just at a quote, unquote, unideal time, but at least you're doing it versus not doing it, and at least you're doing it versus doing it at the same time as when they've got a zillion other things going on. And then the other anchor point that I usually kind of bring out. Actually there's two more Another anchor points that I usually bring out are one if there's a heat training intervention, because that has a very specific timing associated with it, to where you kind of like that's one of the things that, yeah, it can move around a little bit, but not a lot. And the movement around would be do you do a one phase or two phase protocol and then like are you doing it for nine days or six days, like it's?
Speaker 3:three days of movement.
Speaker 1:Right, it's not a lot, I guess, is what I'm. I guess the thing that I'm pointing out you wouldn't do a 30 day protocol versus a 10 day protocol or something like that. You shouldn't be doing a 30 day protocol at all. But that's another podcast. So there's that. And then there's the race recon piece, which is always really tricky because most people it will coincide with two kind of like two things that make it complicated.
Speaker 1:One, that race recon piece is usually the highest volume piece and it can be in some circumstances close enough to the race that you really have to watch out when you actually do it.
Speaker 1:So the very prototypical example of that is the people who go over to UTMB three weeks before the race. They're dealing with jet lag and the playground that is Mont Blanc and they do way too much based on all of those circumstances changing the terrain being a little bit jet lag, being really close to the race, just coming off of travel and maybe their immune system's a little bit broken down, like that whole confluence of everything should tell you, hey, listen, we don't want the highest volume, highest stress load of training to occur right at that time, even though we really want you to get out on the race course. So usually those two components the race recon and then the heat training piece, because they have some sort of like time specificity associated with them proximate to the race. I'm just really careful about making sure that we are setting aside some time to do those interventions because they're so important and we want to get them right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, coop, I'm reminded of a race out here I'm speaking to you all from Arizona and a race out here that's become increasingly popular over the last couple of years the Coca-Cola 250, has a notorious I mean it's a really it's a fabulous event that Araviva puts on, but it's this year, for example, it's the second weekend in May and it has a notoriously difficult start. I think most you've run it before. Most people would say the first, I mean it's a 250 mile race. You're out there a long time, but the first 50 miles, frankly, the first 40 miles, are brutal and even the most experienced 200 mile racers would benefit from coming out and just seeing that section. For those of you unfamiliar, it's a section that basically goes from the desert floor up to sort of the pines and the mountains, up at a small mining town called Crown King that sits at about 6,500 feet. But because of the topography, because of the infrastructure, there are long stretches between aid, including even long stretches between just a random bottom jugs of water out in the middle of the desert. And I don't demand it of my Coca-Cola runners. It just so happens that the Coca-Cola runners this year that I'm coaching are gonna come out it thankfully Aravipa schedules it on April 6th, so it's exactly four weeks before the race.
Speaker 2:They tell you you're gonna be running the first 37 miles of the race, which are notoriously the most difficult and frankly, there's huge bang for your buck on that. So you take an event like that right Now. There's not really a version yet, anyway there's not really a version of the Memorial Day training camp for Coca-Cola. But even that, even being able to do that, if you can afford the time and maybe the travel out to this area, it's definitely worth it. So I think all races have that sort of crux area. So even if you can't recon the entire thing right, if you can at Hard Rock, if you can recon the climb up handys at Leadville, if you can go over Hope Pass at Arkansas Traveler I'm sure there's some crappy part that you need to know because you're gonna be going through it at night and it's gonna be gnarly and leaf covered and whatever else. Like if you can at least do that and that is time specific, like the heat training but you're gonna be ahead of the game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, in a lot of 100 milers it actually is just really difficult to recon the entirety of the course and everybody wants to do that. Everybody wants to run every single step of the entire course and, using this year 2023, western States as an example for the new people on that course, they couldn't. I mean, I guess you could right Like really do it because of the snow. Obviously, big, big, huge snow year. You probably could go from Olympic Valley to Robinson Flat all over the snow and without the course markings and things like that, but that would be a huge endeavor and probably kind of like not really all that worth it. But the point that you're trying to make is is when, for most people that don't have the opportunity or the life situation or whatever to do a full recon of the course, it still is immensely valuable to do that crux.
Speaker 1:And I very specifically remember this about Cocodona because I coached people for the first year of Cocodona when nobody really knew anything, and the one thing that I came away from that experience of coaching people and then watching how the race transpired is everybody got annihilated in that first 40 miles. There's a lot of people who dropped out. In a 250 mile race. They dropped out before they had 210 miles to go. Like that's kind of remarkable, just to even say that. And they're really well-prepared runners. They knew what they were getting into. But everybody was completely underprepared for how hard that was. And even me and I you know, I think I've got a pretty good eye on being able to size up race courses and the demands and things like that Even I was shocked at it.
Speaker 1:And so when I decided to do it the second year, I went out to the race course and I did half of that section on one day when I went out for black canyons, and then I did the other half that same weekend that they put on the training camp and it wasn't until then to where I actually did it, trying to learn kinesthetically about the course, where I said you know what I get it. Now I get why this, I 100% get why this is so hard. I'm gonna change a little bit of the kind of philosophy that you're kind of coaching people into the race with not to change the training at all, but you kind of change how they kind of like orient themselves for each section of the race. I'm gonna change this and I'm gonna do it a whole lot differently Now, as, irony would have it, that was the year of the fire and we didn't even get to run that section of the course.
Speaker 3:And I felt like I was super prepared for it.
Speaker 1:But I guess my point with that is is, even if you can't recon the entirety of the course which is the case for most people look at what the crux is, and that's usually a relatively known commodity for any race that's been around for a few years. You can ask people people always talk about it and go do that and the benefits go way beyond just the training bump that you get from it. You get confidence from it, you kind of know the course and then when you get into this hardest piece of it, you're like okay, I've been here and that's really empowering.
Speaker 3:Yeah, especially with the case of Coca-Dona. You know how much water to carry.
Speaker 1:Or you at least, get it closer Right now. Right now, I think it's a four. This past year it was a four liter mandatory carry.
Speaker 1:I think for anybody in the back half it should be six, which is almost pragmatically impossible unless you've got a completely different kit, like I wanted for. On the training run I took four liters and once again, this is a month earlier, it's not nearly as hot. I took four liters and I was dry for the last 30 minutes and I was kind of conserving a little bit. So once again, just kind of like knowing those things, you can yes, you can get a lot of it by doing your due diligence, doing the research on the course, looking up you know, old race reports, talking to the people that have done the race. Absolutely that shouldn't excuse you from doing your homework, but there is something about kind of like actually physically getting out there and like viscerally feeling what is you know kind of transpire during the race.
Speaker 2:By the way, just to put it in perspective for the listeners who might not be familiar with the Coca-Done in this section, this 37-mile section has an 18-hour cutoff. That's what I'm saying. It should be six.
Speaker 1:And you get water at 11 miles. That's the last aid station and then they have another like drop point, like two or three miles before crown king. So I can't do the math in those at 16 miles that you're kind of without aid. But if it's an 18-hour cutoff and a 37-mile section and 16 of those miles is without aid you're looking at once again the back of the pack people it takes them 10 or 12 hours and that's what I'm saying. It should be six, like Jamil, if you're listening to this, six liter mandatory carry for anybody, like anybody outside of the top 25%, like I. Just I would advise. I haven't had this yet but once again, if I were advising an athlete that were anywhere near that 18-hour cutoff or 15 hours, take five liters, take six liters from the section, and that's hard to conceptualize unless you've actually been out there, even when you do all the math. If I got the math wrong somebody pinged me on social media later but I think I roughed it in in my head pretty good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had an athlete last year who was towards the back of the pack and she carried six liters and it was because she went out there and did the course recon that she realized I have to carry more water.
Speaker 1:Wow, unbelievable. Okay, let's move off with Coca-dona. I think we've got to set up kind of a reasonable framework, to set up what are the anchor points and to try to set up the long range plan. For those of you that are listening to this that want more information on how to actually piece together a long range plan, I'm going to put a link in a show notes to an article that I wrote in terms of what to do for a second and third when you should do your high intensity, when you should do your high volume, how do you organize these training blocks and things like that. All of it's in my book, but I kind of neatly encapsulated it in an article on a train right site. So you guys are more than welcome to check that out. If you want to set it out, set it up for yourself.
Speaker 1:The next thing I want to go through is what are the other things to take into consideration? It's really easy for us to say, okay, we're going to pick our supporting races and figure out when we're going to do our heat training protocols and when are we going to recon the race. But there are other things that athletes should take into consideration earlier rather than later when they are planning out their season. They might not all materialize earlier rather than later, but they should at least start thinking about it now, so it's not such a cram job coming into the race. So, cliff, we're going to start with you for this one, and you can pick however many you want to. What other things that probably aren't going through the athletes' minds right now should they actually be taking into consideration?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think nutrition and hydration and we kind of just touched on the hydration piece is a big topic to start thinking about early. The earlier the better, and especially if you're going from one climate to another climate and your strategy is going to be completely different than what you're typically training in. If you're going up to altitude, you're going to have to drink excess fluids because of that. If you're racing in a hot environment, that's an obvious one. Your sweat rate is going to change significantly, and so I think if you start thinking about this stuff, the earlier you start planning and organizing. How are you going to address that? How are you going to start training the gut? At what point should you start getting very specific in your nutrition and hydration plan, especially if you're not even able to train in the environment that you're going to race in, and I think all of those complexities. The earlier the better. You're setting yourself up for success.
Speaker 2:We've been talking about six liters and five liters and everything else. I'm going to piggyback on Cliff and say gear. You got to start thinking about gear now. Pack shoes, poles, jacket all of the various things, depending on what the environmental conditions of the race that you're targeting are. Get that, do that thinking, do that talking to people, talk to your coach, talk to your friends, talk to people who've done the race before. How on earth did Cliff's athlete carry six liters? And really actually do your homework on those things so that they're not something that you're occupying your mental energy six weeks and four weeks before the race, when you're really, really focusing on training.
Speaker 1:I had a similar one to that that I'll lead in with and then I'll piggyback off of that as well, and it's what do you think you want to tinker with? So, do you want to tinker with your gear? Do you want to tinker with your nutrition program? Do you want to even tinker with your pacing or even your psychology? Starting to do that early and figuring out if that tinkering is going to make a difference is, I think, a way, way, way, far better strategy than tinkering with it late and running a foul of the nothing new on race day. Now, there is a caveat to that, and you guys aren't aware of this, because I recorded this podcast yesterday with two of our coaches, stephanie Howe and John Fitzgerald, and one of the things that we talked about during that podcast which will have come out two weeks ago once everybody's listening to this now is that you shouldn't be tinkering with everything all at once. If you're going to tinker, apply some sort of scientific method to it and tinker with one thing at a time so you can trace the cause and effect, and you know what. This is going to take more time, and you know what. I'm not sorry about it. I'm not saying that you should be tinkering with one thing at a time. Figure out if it makes a cause and effect. Tinker with another thing at a time, see if that is going to improve or how you feel afterwards, and just move through it logically. And if you do it now, you have enough time to go through all of those iterations. If you wait three months from now, you're not going to have enough time. And that's what that's. When you try to tinker with everything it wants. I want a new pack, I want a new hydration system, I want a new fluid in my hydration system, I want new shoes. I want all of this stuff all at once. That's when it becomes problematic, when you're trying to change five or six variables, kind of all at the same time. So that's my one that I'll piggyback off of. Is all this new stuff? Tinker with any of the things that you think that you're going to tinker with. Do it now and then carry it into the kind of the meat of training. If you figure out, it's going to be something that's translatable.
Speaker 1:The other one that I'm going to put in front of people, and that's figure out who you want to be on your crew. People will volunteer for this stuff and you can always get people at the last minute to agree to these things that people want to help out. But don't leave it to that. If you set it up from all of my people who are running Western States, they know who their crew is right now, every single one of them. They already know, or they know who the two people that have the potential to show up are.
Speaker 1:That's a short list. I guess it's kind of what I'm saying. Don't leave it to the week before the race or two weeks before the race and then you're scrambling around and then you got to give the crew all the instructions and everything. Figure out who that crew is going to be now, so that you can just kind of set it and forget it and then maybe you got and train with them and then maybe you can invite them on some of your training camps and training activities and things like that. It's a big psychological relief to have that set in motion in advance, as opposed to being the person who's cajoling whoever they can find in the week who is actually available. That's who you're kind of stuck with at that point. Who's actually available at that time when you're looking at people like the week of the race.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you touched on the psychology and I think that if we were to kind of like just back up and like completely zoom out here and look at this from a 30,000th of you all right, you get your race schedule. Now what? Well, the mental piece is kind of starting immediately with the goal setting, with the you know what you want to get out of this, who you want to be on race day, what's going to be required of you, how, how, like, how are you going to grow? And what's required of you to be the person capable of completing this goal. That starts from day one. And you got to start thinking about the mental piece and I firmly believe that starts with goal setting, getting some goals down and understanding them as you focus your attention, this whole of what you're doing. Okay, so that's all you're going to be getting out of that Bye, what it is you want to accomplish.
Speaker 2:On the, I completely agree, cliff, and I think part of that mental framing and related to Coop's decide your crew now is, I think it's really really key to think through the fact, especially some of these races that we've talked about that are sort of once in a lifetime bucket list type things. You finally got your number for Western States or for Hard Rock or UTMB and everyone wants to come with you, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah your whole family, your friends, everybody's like oh don't do that, Don't yes they want to share the joy and the love and the experience.
Speaker 2:But presumably you've run other races where you've had crew with you and some have worked well and some have worked not so well, and a lot of these races that those three I just mentioned they require a lot from the crew.
Speaker 2:Sleepless nights, sometimes multiple sleepless nights, traveling in strange places in the dark, dealing with rules that you may not like All of these things are part of what the crew has to deal with while the runner is out there running, and that should be something you think about right now.
Speaker 2:I had an athlete last year in Western States who has he has a spouse and two lovely little children and they were spectators. The spouse and the children were spectators, they were not crew. They were two other people that this my athlete trained with and worked with and that these friends with they were the crew. So, yes, the spouse and children were there, but they weren't fundamentally necessary and if the children got cranky and they wanted to go back to the hotel and be in the air conditioning, it wasn't gonna impact my athletes race. You want to think about that and that is, frankly, the mental framing who do I want to be there when I'm having my boosters popped or I'm throwing up on, you know, at the aid station or whatever. Who do I want to be there and why I have those conversations?
Speaker 3:now, who's not gonna let me quit?
Speaker 1:Right, I like that, I like that. You know, I bought three plane tickets this week and I put flight alerts up for three other places because they're a little bit too far in advance. And the reason for that is is people season start to get set. So you guys know I look at all my athletes calendars where am I gonna go? Based on my athlete calendars, and now that it's all set I can say, okay, I'm gonna go here, here and here, and I just booked everything basically through March, just this week, and I use that as an example to point out everybody's kind of planning it. But the way that I use it from a coaching standpoint is now I can come back and say, hey, I'm gonna be here for you during this race.
Speaker 1:Sometimes that's within elite athletes, sometimes with an everyday athlete, sometimes I've got multiple athletes in races, sometimes it's just one. Right, I'll go there for one athlete, pending on the situation. I love doing that. But my point with that is I wanna make it clear to the athletes that I'm working with that. At least you're gonna have me. I might not be your top choice, but at least you're gonna have me at this thing. Let's work on the rest of the team that's around you and try to fill the gaps.
Speaker 1:And I do find that that it's a little bit of a sense of relief, kind of my earlier point, because that's something that's kind of in the back of their minds how to navigate this, especially if they are getting into a really big race or they're going into something where they kind of like, might not know the scene right, Having the confidence that somebody is at least there for them maybe they know the place or maybe they don't, but at least somebody is there for them is actually really quite confident.
Speaker 1:You know, you guys, we're making a big push this year at Western States, where our coaches are gonna come out and support our athletes, and we already know that we're already projecting that out to our athletes and to the athletes that might sign up between now and when Western States actually starts and what I'm hoping is that at least knowing that somebody is gonna be in their corner that's been there, that's a professional right.
Speaker 1:We're all professional coaches that are going out there is a big win that they can initially put in their corner for, which will be, for most people, a race that might come around once in a decade or maybe once in a once, an entire lifetime, and so it all kind of points back to the, to this fact that another thing that you can do kind of like really early on during this time of year is to start to set who is going to support me during the actual race itself. Is a training partner, is it a spouse? Is it a friend? Is it a coach? Is it some combination of all those? Or do I just wanna go solo and then I can make that part of my deal, which is what a lot of people do. Making that decision early on becomes something that can be extremely powerful as well.
Speaker 2:I wanna elaborate on that Coop because we also we provided aid for athletes at Leadville 100 and Javalina 100 over the last several months and I happen to have two athletes one in each race that were traveling to both races from very far away Women, they weren't bringing their family with them, they weren't bringing anybody, and they were originally just planning on kind of going drop bag to drop bag and once we had the provided the opportunity for them. I mean, we were only in one location that they saw twice at Leadville and then the location where they went by four times at Javalina. It was just such a mental relief for them. It was they didn't have to worry about and they wanted to keep it simple oh look, I just want this bag and it has all my stuff in it and I'll come by here three times and I'll get my stuff and it'll all be good. But the end result was oh my gosh, it's so nice to see these familiar faces and you're getting me out the door and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:So I can't I can't overstate it enough, having that aspect of the who have. However, whatever form of the support you're getting is predictable and is established early, the better. We all know these big races have wonderful aid stations and outstanding volunteer corps. This is not to say that those people are not doing the same thing everybody else is, which is pushing them down the trail, but something about like that known quantity, that person you know, even if you met them just the day before at the pre-race briefing you know, really, really helps. Not to mention, some folks are inexperienced crews. Right, I mean, I counted up the percentages 82% of the runners that are currently on the entrance list for Western states have never run it before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's absolutely amazing that means 82% of the crews have never been there before. I mean think about that. They're driving around at night. Oh God, oh God.
Speaker 1:Well. So I made this point at the USCA coaching conference Cliff is aware of this and I think, andy, you and I have talked about it is that when I go to support an athlete at a race I threw it I look at it through the lens of how can I be an ergogenic aid for that athlete in that race and I've just appreciated more as my career has gone on, the fact that it actually is. I'm doing the exact same thing that you know, a family member would do or a friend would do, or an aid station volunteer. I'm going to a location and handing gels off, like you know, not much more complicated than that. But because it's me and the relationship that I have with the athlete and maybe some other things that I can do, I can bring a specific skill set in, like patching up somebody's foot or some psychology skill set that I can bring in that probably, you know, some random person can't Sure. That's a little bit of it, but largely just because it's me and the athlete knows that I care a lot, it acts as an ergogenic aid. Now, it doesn't always have to be a coach or your coach, and not everybody has to be coached, but if athletes think about their crew in terms of who is going to be my ergogenic aid, like who amongst these people especially the 82% of the Western states, people that are coming to it for the first time who or whom is going to be there? That is going to be my ergogenic aid, and everybody's going to have a little bit of a different answer. Right, I want the cheerleader, the drill sergeant, as Dominic, or friend Dominic, who's our sales rep, is very fond of saying everybody's going to have a little bit of a different answer there, but looking at it through that lens, I think provides some. So it helps you kind of tailor and filter that process Because, as you mentioned, andy, for a race like Western states, everybody wants to help and not everybody is going to be the ergogenic aid and at the end of the day, the athlete has to say you know what?
Speaker 1:I got to be kind of selfish here. This is about me. This might I might not get an opportunity like this in another 10 years or maybe even ever, and so I want to set it up right. So I think that framework of who is going to help me, who or whom is going to help me out during the race, is the right way to start that initial process. What else Is there anything else that athletes should take into consideration now when they're setting up this framework of training and racing for the summer? They've got a race kind of like nine months down from now. We've gone through the tinkering piece, we've gone through the nutrition piece, we've gone through the crew piece. What else should athletes be taking into consideration to just help catalyze this whole process?
Speaker 3:You know, I don't know how, this isn't a very detailed thing, but it's kind of more of like a mindset piece and that's just keep the main thing, the main thing.
Speaker 3:For the next six to nine months, however long the process is to the A goal, keep the main thing, the main thing. And because there's going to be opportunities to do a lot of cool stuff that might pull you in an opposite direction. If we think about supporting races right, you mentioned kind of like we don't want the high volume being within the last three weeks. If you get an opportunity to do a 50 miler and it's two weeks out from race day, let's do a hard pass. We know that they're going to go in toasted and the benefits of that 50 miler are even going to pay off for two weeks after the race. So just keep the main thing, the main thing and stay really focused. And that's why we put together a plan, that's why we get organized, that's why we're thinking about through all of these things is so that we stay focused and stay on a strategic path, because if you get into Western states, you're getting one of these lottery races. It's a really big, freaking deal and you want to stay focused.
Speaker 1:And that's why the prioritization is important, right? That's kind of. The first part of everything is, you're using the vocabulary Make the main thing the main thing. I'm using the same thing, I'm just calling it a prioritize list.
Speaker 1:I 100% agree with that because, trust me, as much as you want to plan my planning lens, like when I I mean Cliff knows this because I work with him directly as an athlete I might plan two or three weeks out in advance, and that's a market difference from how I coached maybe four or five years ago, where I'd plan like six weeks out or maybe even eight weeks out in advance, and what I've realized is my predictive capacity is just kind of terrible.
Speaker 1:To be honest with you, sometimes it's 10 days because I don't want to like get too far ahead of myself. Now, that doesn't mean you can't have the framework in place. You should absolutely have the framework in place. But just, you kind of realize the limitations of the of the planning, and part of the way you're realizing the limitations of the planning is prioritizing things so that when that push comes to shove, whatever life kind of curveball kind of throws in your way, it actually kind of makes a decision really easy. And you don't sit there and like, should I do this or that or what should I kind of compromise on? You can just look at your prioritize list and go, nope, we're going to do more of this and less of this Simple decision move forward.
Speaker 2:I want to jump in and take a point off, make the main thing, the main thing that Cliff said and be, and the sort of selfish piece that Coop said. It's the holidays, this you know where I think that we're. This is coming out. You know, shortly after, after Christmas, you, in the new year, it's a great time for a family meeting, and I mean I mean a family meeting. Look, for the next six months I might be a little bit selfish for the next six months we do expectations management.
Speaker 2:Now, I wasn't joking when I said this isn't the time to, you know, to do a kitchen remodel or do your roof right. You can trust maybe John Medinger, who's one, a longtime board member of Western States, has often said you know, trust me, a long-suffering spouse. You know the the runner will be there to do the dishes and do the house projects in July. I think, if you, if you can have, if you can have that family meeting. So, because it is gonna get tough, you are gonna go out for an eight-hour Raw run and then be exhausted and not be able to take care of the kids and stuff.
Speaker 2:I think having that conversation now, whatever the race is we've talked a lot about Western States, but it could be hard rock and be a coca-donald. We UTMB to be Arkansas traveler can be have a Lena, whatever it is. That's going to be them, as as as cliff says, the main thing and may make the athlete Seem to be and actually be, selfish and self-absorbed. I think for the athlete to own that right now. You know, look, look, I'm probably going to be a little bit obsessed about this. I'm gonna need a lot of sleep, I'm gonna need to eat. I might not be able to walk the dog all the time, I might not be able to pick up the kids all the time. I mean, those, those conversations, if they can happen, can really really help things in the in the long term, and so I I just think that that's part of One of those intangibles that they can, that athletes can do now. That will, that will help the entire process.
Speaker 1:So basically, this is the time frame I'm gonna burn all of my brownie points.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is the time frame.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna earn them back right.
Speaker 2:Graham. Graham Cooper, who won, won Western States in 2006, that infamous year when, when Brian Morrison collapsed on the track, graham Cooper and his wife Hillary, hillary, is wonderful, wonderful. He would take her to Las Vegas Every year on 4th of July. Every year he went with Western States. They went to Las Vegas, he got the nannies to take care of the kids and you know. And she would tell everybody during Western States oh, it's okay, I don't mind, he's taking me to Las Vegas, I'm gonna get a spa, a massage and everything else. That's advice. It worked for Graham. I think it could work for you all.
Speaker 3:I've got some things to learn there.
Speaker 1:Everybody right now is like oh my gosh, this is the, this is how this is marriage counseling right here.
Speaker 3:We're not getting into that business.
Speaker 1:This is we are not getting into that business, but this is as close as we're gonna get spouse counseling right here. All right, you guys, this is fun. I'm gonna leave links in the show notes to everything. Cliff, do you have any other parting thoughts? Andy, do you have any other parting thoughts before we'd let the listeners go? Andy, I expect you to have something, you're.
Speaker 2:Yes, of course, for those people who are sitting on the precipice of this potential once in a lifetime opportunity. You know, do do it, do it all. Do do your homework. You know, talk to your coach, work out your plan, take care of your logistics. Like this is. This could be arguably Some of the most enjoyable six months of of your life. I remember the late Mark Rickman, who I trained with a lot in the Bay Area. You know he was like that. You know, the training is the Sunday. You know, and the and the final buildup is the sauce on top of the Sunday and the race is the cherry on top Right and right now you're building the Sunday. You'd ice cream. You got your different flavors. You're, you know all that. You're getting ready to put the cherry on top. But savor this. You know you might never have a six months or eight months like this again in your life. You know, make it work.
Speaker 1:I like that sentiment. Go all in. If you pick something, you might as well do it right. Yeah, all right. Folks, thanks for joining the podcast today. I always appreciate you guys's perspective on things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks a lot, Coop.
Speaker 1:All right, folks, there you have it. There you go. Much Thanks to coaches Cliff Pittman and AJW for coming on the podcast today and revealing how we do it with our Athletes when we get to set their seasons up. I have a special note of congratulations to coach AJW because, as of the release of this podcast, he is a full-time professional coach. For many decades, ajw has spit or has had his foot in two very different arenas, one of them being academia and the other one being trail running, and he just recently decided to make the full-time leap as a trail running Coach, as a professional coach with CTS, and we could not be more thrilled because I have always felt that the more full-time Professional coaches that we have out in the arena, and in particularly the ones that are underneath our umbrella, the better the entire community and ecosystem of coaches and athletes are. So congratulations, ajw, on that move. I know it was a big one and I can imagine it was a scary one. We talked a lot about how to orchestrate that move kind of in the background, but we're thrilled that you actually decided to make the leap.
Speaker 1:For those of you listening out there, I hope that you came away with a great template for how to set your season up. If you want to turn it over to the professionals, hit me up on social media, send me a direct message or go directly to train right comm and fill out the Initial athlete questionnaire. That is the best way to get this process started. If you want to turn your coaching over, you want to turn your training over to the professionals, to a professional coach. I have a tremendous amount of confidence and all of our staff are on the phone every single week doing continued education and they're just absolutely simply the best. And as a bonus for you runners that are running the Western States 100 this year, we are coming out to the race and full force in support of all of our CTS athletes at that particular race. So you get world-class coaching and the absolute best race support imaginable all wrapped up into the same Package. Alright, folks, that is it for today and, as always, we will see you out on the trails.