Evaluating a weakness and developing a plan

Coming off both Black Canyon and Canyons, my body seemed unable to hold up well under heavy load. In both cases, something went wrong muscularly, which made me reel it in and end my race unexpectedly. I was well aware of this weakness going into Canyons; unfortunately, I did almost nothing about it.

I told myself I would consistently hit the gym (I did not), and I told myself I would go vert heavy (I also hardly did). So when my IT band started bothering me the week BEFORE Canyons, I knew I was going to be in for a rough ride. Sure enough, I was popping my IT band only 40 miles in, I realized I needed to work on muscular strength and endurance.

Purpose

I am writing this to document my intended full summer block focused on building muscular endurance. I am setting an intention to attempt an additional 50-miler or 100k by the end of this year, so falling back to “base” period this summer, hopefully, will set me up to do this properly this time and enable me to maintain this strength through more rigorous threshold blocks.

The How

The three main workouts for this block will be as follows. Heavy rucking on a steep trail. Hill sprints consisting of 30 seconds to 1minute with equal rest. And progressive overload in the gym, focusing on heavy single-leg exercises, mainly RDL and Bulgarian Split Squats. I aim to progressively increase the load from these workouts over the course of three months.

Monthly Breakdown

May will serve as a low-volume month focused on ensuring all workouts are completed properly and understood thoroughly, as well as mentally prepping myself to start training hard again. It is my mid-year “off-season,” where, other than these workouts, running will be based on feel and adventure. I hope to keep up with a longer run at very low effort during this month, which allows me to explore some new areas around me. I always look forward to this sort of month during my training cycle, and with my IT band on the fritz post canyons, hopefully, it will be a good reset to get my body healthy and ready to work hard.

June will serve as a build month. I will start to increase mileage again while starting to push workouts a bit more in terms of volume. By this time, I hope these workouts feel comfortable to execute as my body starts to adapt, and it can start to adapt to increased mileage as well as these workouts.

Entering July, I hope to start getting fully back into the swing of things. Here, I hope to start incorporating some light tempo efforts (z3) in conjunction with the hill sprint efforts ( think multiple sets of hill sprints into longer 10-15min tempo efforts). This will increase overall training load and workout load, as well as start to prime myself for a more focused threshold and speed block without such a sudden jump straight from pure strength focus.

Tying it all in

Looking forward past July, I most likely will attempt a similarly structured block to Black Canyon, but with more focus on trail running and uphill running rather than flat. Two weeks of V02 to start leading into longer and more intensive threshold blocks seemed to work very well in improving my body's running economy on the road; hopefully, I can transfer this effectively to the trail now.