Today’s episode breaks from our traditional format on Coaches’ Corner. Instead of starting with a T/F statement and then discussing the topic, we talk about a specific event today. This episode was recorded on July 2nd, 2019, just a few days after the 2019 WS100 Endurance Run. My guest coaches each had some great insights and experience at the event and we thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about their experiences and about how training may differ among athletes for the same event. Remember that you can send your suggested T/F statements for topics of future episodes to shawn@scienceofultra.com

Today, we take a closer look at focus, which is the first of our core features of a high performance mindset. From focus with mindfulness, you can develop the other features of a high performance mindset: calm, confidence, optimism, and trust.

If you’re going to do something that’s difficult, like running ultra-marathons, it’s important to have a strategy. Inside of that strategy you have to develop and refine skills through deliberate practice. Train your mind, just like you train your body. In this installment, we create an overview of training the mind.

The average pace for an ultra-marathon isn't very fast. In races of 100 miles, for example, the average pace can be slower than easy training runs. How do successful ultra-marathon runners pace themselves? How do you pace yourself? Is it true that you should start races, especially longer ones, like a stroll in the park?

Do older athletes need to train differently compared to their younger selves? Coaches Ian Sharman, David Roche, Krissy Moehl, and Shawn Bearden discuss training as we age in today's Coaches' Corner. Watch the discussion on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/loH878kbRbQ Each coach can be reached through their respective websites: Krissy Moehl http://KrissyMoehl.com David Roche https://SWAPRunning.com Ian Sharman https://SharmanUltra.com Shawn Bearden https://ScienceOfUltra.com  

Running economy is one of the three key features in performance, along with endurance and stamina. You can develop your running economy through heavy resistance training, sprints, and volume. This episode is a crash course in how do it right.

V̇O2max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use per minute. It's a metabolic rate that can be sustained for 6-10 minutes. Why do you hear so much about it in running, when competitions are so much longer. Maybe your V̇O2max isn't something you should ever focus on.

What we’re talking about today is stamina. Stamina is your ability to maintain a pace for a long time. Stamina comprises endurance and economy. Endurance is your ability to cover a distance or to persist for a time. Economy is a traditionally quantified as the steady state oxygen consumption at a given running velocity. For our purposes, economy of running is the energy required to run at a given pace. Today’s episode is meant to introduce the key concepts and functional goals of improving endurance and economy so that you can improve stamina. Today, we also explain endurance as a capacity and how to increase endurance within the context of consistency for sufficient and relative weekly volumes. We also outline how to progress training volume of easy running and how to test your bioenergetic and physiological capacity profile with an easy run test. Then we added strides as a salvo into developing economy. Economy will be the next topic in the series on training your body for ultra-marathons.

Workouts are when you stress your body. The rest of the day is when you improve. That's what we call recovery. Not only recovering to be able to do it again (get back to pre-workout capacity) but also adapt and become stronger (a new baseline capacity). Coaches Ian Sharman, David Roche, Krissy Moehl, and Shawn Bearden discuss recovery in today's Coaches' Corner. Watch the discussion on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/loH878kbRbQ Each coach can be reached through their respective websites: Krissy Moehl http://KrissyMoehl.com David Roche https://SWAPRunning.com Ian Sharman https://SharmanUltra.com Shawn Bearden https://ScienceOfUltra.com  

As we begin to dissect the three domains of training - mind, body, craft - start by answering Why and What. Then we can decide How to train. Your answers are unique to you. This episode will give you definitions and guidance on answering Why and What for yourself.