Coach Mark Marzen here of Golden Endurance. We’re taking this time to say hello once again to the Golden Endurance community, give you a glimpse into what we have been up to in our own athletic journeys, and demonstrate how we apply our own coaching principles to these journeys.
I finished off 2024 with a late autumn rolling hill hundred mile race, called the Rim to River 100. A quickly growing West Virginia regional classic that takes place in the New River Gorge National Park, during the height of east coast fall foliage. A beautiful and extremely well put on the east coast that I highly recommend!
After some rest and recovery I set my sight on Jackpot 100 in February, a paved hundred mile race, with just a few thousand feet of elevation gain (essentially “flat). This was my first foray into the paved and “flat” hundred mile world. Now that Jackpot has concluded, I am setting my sites on Cruel Jewel 100 miler. A Georgia, ~30,000 ft of gain, big mountain race. Basically the opposite end of the hundred mile spectrum from Jackpot. So I’d like to dive into how I approached training for Jackpot with a bit of Cruel Jewel in mind, and how I’m using the time between the events to aim toward the unique demands of a big mountain hundred after a flat hundred.
More Time On My Weakness and Stay In Touch With My Strengths:
I wouldn’t call myself an inherently “fast” road runner, with much of my running spent on trails, and my focus usually on trail racing. I also tend to feel a bit more banged up and achy when spending more time on roads. So, I knew I had to focus a bit more of my time on increasing my running economy, threshold pace, and adapt to hard surfaces and a consistent steady speed that would bring success at Jackpot. I therefore incorporated short to tempo workouts (1-2x a week) for several blocks of training. I knew that I had years of an aerobic base under my belt, so if I would ever feel fatigue building to the point of impacting these intensity sessions, I would dial back the volume a bit to compensate. Volume and Intensity are inversely proportional in training. As one goes up the other goes down. Additionally though, I made sure to get in one weekly long run, focused on a steady easy effort to allow musculoskeletal adaptations to the harder surfaces gradually over the three and a half months of training.
Strength Training and Occasional Aim Towards The Mountains:
I had a couple minor muscle strains that occurred along the way in training, and worked with our very own PT, Dr. Gabe Dorn, to create a strength work plan to shore up these weaknesses and worries. I included other lower and upper body strength with these exercises 2-3 times a week. This ensured further durability as I adapted to the demands of the harder surfaces and more monotonous biomechanics of road running. It also supported my transition into training focused on vertical gain and descent.
Additionally, during the last few weeks of training for Jackpot, I incorporated 1-2 treadmill sessions of easy steep hiking for 30-45min as an additional aerobic stimulus. This curbed impact forces, while also building a bit of specificity to my training goals that I knew would come after Jackpot. My body responds well to high volume training, and I was doing sufficient road volume so incorporating this treadmill work was an added bonus. I also continued with once a week runs up and down a long road that transverses the local mountain. The down hill running added just enough eccentric contraction as a muscular stimulus. Now, during my mountain-focused Cruel Jewel race, downhills don’t cause extreme muscular breakdown that impedes overall training.
Do The Next Logical Thing with the Time Available:
I now have about 12 weeks of training available between Jackpot and Cruel Jewel. This allows for a few solid blocks of training. My high end, flat running capacity is sound, so I am incorporating strides (20-30 sec intervals at the end of easy running) a couple times a week to maintain this adaptation. My focus in the first few blocks is adapting my high end capacity to hills, so I will focus on short intervals uphill. I’ll eventually have a block of longer intervals at a tempo effort, to build sustained uphills effort. Along the way I will continue to incorporate the steady hiking sessions, as this will build specificity to the event terrain and effort.
During the second half of the training time available, I’ll focus almost exclusively on race effort, terrain, and place a heavy focus on volume. With the limited time available, the overarching theme is specificity. While I plan to do a couple “training” races during this period, I know I can’t have multiple goals at once, and theses race will be more of a “B” or “C” race where I’ll use them as way to focus on the other important things to me in running (community, travel, adventure, etc).
There’s a saying that we often overestimate what we can achieve in a year, but underestimate what we can achieve in 3 years. I like to help athletes think about what they need to do to prepare for their next event with the constraints they’re under and who they are as an athlete, but also what they need to do to achieve their running goals 1, 2, 5+ years from now. Specificity, individualization, responsive training programs, and a clear definition of running goals can help make for a successful future race, leading to years of growth and enjoyment. It's what I strive for in my own running as well.
By Mark Marzen
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