Strava peaks and plateaus

Maybe it's actually not ideal for your training summary to look like the Alps?

European mountain ranges are known for their prominence (noun: the condition of standing out from something by physically projecting or being particularly noticeable) - marked by high, technical peaks, and long, deep valleys.

This provides a huge advantage while training for a trail race with high vert, as opposed to having to hunt for the oxymoron that is steep yet runnable switchbacks, like we do out here in the front-rage of the Rockies. High prominence in a training build, however, is not a model for success.

Strava snapshot of my weekly running volume for the last year

As depicted above, since January of this year, my weekly training variance looks like a profile of the Alps (for more deets, here’s my Strava). Coming out of the holidays, recently recovered from a calf injury, I had 2 months to prepare for the Big Alta 50k (31 miles with 7,500 ft of very runnable vert on oft lauded “California Carpet”). My block from the first week of the year to race week at the end of Feb:

It’s not hard to see that I crammed for this race. After a smart first two weeks in the high 40s, I jumped up to two 70ish mile weeks with 10k+ feet of vert (a lot for me at the time), before a down week and then an 80 mile peak week with 16k+ elevation gain. These 8 weeks included 2 of my highest volume weeks…ever.

Come race day, I found myself climbing efficiently and descending with intensity. Had I avoided noob fueling mistakes which led to muscle cramps around mile 22, I am confident I would have improved my 12th place finish and landed in the 6th-8th range. In hindsight, fresh early season legs and a moderate load ranging from 60-80 miles and ~10k feet of average weekly elevation gain put me in a good spot.

Now, let’s look at the builds up to Desert Rats and Broken Arrow.

After the Big Alta, I wisely took a down week (supplemented by a few bike trainer sessions), then building back up before a strong spike to another new highest mileage week ever: 94 miles over 13.6 hours of running. This week had a fairly low “vert quotient” (patent pending) at under 1k feet of climbing per mile. The snowy Denver March forced the lower elevation gain but was not a huge detractor as Desert Rats is not a climb-heavy 100k.

Which brings us to the problem block, Broken Arrow.

In total, I put in an admirable amount of quality volume and vert over 7 weeks of proper training. The way I approached this catered to a sense of desperation and Strava vanity. I cranked my vert quotient up while trying to keep my average pace quick. Throw in a mid-build bachelor party in Cabo, sprinkle on a little achilles niggle, and my consistency went out the window. Week 21, in isolation, is impressive: 18k feet of vert with 91 miles over 15 hours of running. Week 22 improved on those stats across the board.

For those keeping track at home, in two months time I put in my 3 highest volume weeks to date. By the taper, my body was torched, my mind confused, and my spirit wilted.

Lesson learned. Nothing beats a consistent build, prioritizing aerobic volume, staying within your intensity limits. Spiking a high volume week just to bank the training doesn’t result in fitness that can be drawn upon on race day. Quite the opposite in fact.

Now, why do we keep running if not to learn from our past missteps?

As I build towards the Ultra-Trail Cape Town 100k in November (with the Pikes Peak marathon as a tune up in September) I’m applying these learnings in a number of ways:

• I started working with a coach again, taking that mental load off my plate and injecting a fresh sense of excitement into my training

• More easy aerobic runs. If I’m feeling good on a recovery day, I run with a sense of gratitude but still keep it easy

• Less Strava and data crunching (work in progress, took the app off my phone to kickstart this)

• Analog running, connecting with the trail not my watch and hr monitor

• A renewed focus on physical therapy/rehab and trail-specific strength work

• Community time, through group runs and volunteer race or trail maintenance days

It’s early still, but this build is already looking better…more like the plateau I’m striving for.

Oh, before I sign-off. If you have any interest in doing this type of mid-year retrospective, I’d be more than happy to share my spreadsheet template and help crunch some data for you. Just leave a comment or shoot me an email.