Most people do not wake up on a Saturday and think, I might go for a gentle jog, then accidentally end up entered in an Ultra with 3000m of Vert, a compulsory gear list, and a finish line that closes after dark. Ultras are not an accident.They are a choice.A Read more
A 100 miler is a big day out, but it is not a mystical distance reserved for genetically gifted lunatics. For most athletes it is a project, not a miracle, and the best results come from simple training done consistently and aimed at the right things. This blog is your Read more
Most athletes enter races with good intentions. They want to challenge themselves, finish something hard, maybe surprise themselves with what they are capable of. Very few people line up intending to cheat. But integrity in sport is not defined by intent alone. It is defined by behaviour, responsibility, and accountability, Read more
Oooky trigger warning! The following post contains some yucky foot pics Your feet are the only bit of you that actually has to finish an ultra. Your lungs can whinge, your quads can threaten to resign, your mind can spiral into a small existential crisis at 2am, but if your Read more
Understand trading paces, different metrics and how to transpose them to RPE
If you coach long enough, you realise most athletes are trying to answer two different questions that get mashed together into one. Question one is prediction: what finish time is realistic for me on this course, this year, given my current fitness and how I usually race. Question two is Read more
How to estimate your probable finish time at a future event
The next few minutes of reading might shave a fair whack off your Tarawera time. Welcome to the self-doubt riddled sharpen/taper phase.Here’s a few questions we get in the last few weeks to race day, Am I doing enough?Two things, the first being the most important,1) regardless of whether you Read more
An athlete reached out stating that they feel as though they have been holding station a bit and were wondering where the gains had gone.
Hopefully my response is of interest or use to a wider audience.
It is an undeniable truth that as we age we slow down, but from what age this begins and at what rate do we slow has been the subject of much research. We do not begin to slow down until our early to mid-30s, and the three primary physiological mechanisms Read more