I am known as the guy who runs absurd distances that many people don’t even like to drive, so you’d think that I must have training dialed in. It’s actually the opposite. As a goal run or race approaches, of course, my running frequency ramps up, but I’ve always kind of hated structured training. The two jokes I tend to pull out when someone brings up my being an ultrarunner are: “I love ultrarunning because it doesn’t involve as much running” and “I never learn my lesson.”
Before I ever started running, I did just about every other sport—like hockey and lacrosse—and was super competitive. Back then, training meant doing tons of drills, listening to coaches, executing, repeating, whatever it took to get stronger, faster, more skilled. As I got older, and into high school sports, coaches got a bit tougher, and I got a bit more rebellious. The same stubbornness that gets me through a long night on the trails was, at that time, channeled into trying to prove a coach wrong or do something in a different way. In the end, it created more internal friction with the concept of training. My family moved when I was about halfway through high school, and my new school didn’t have the sports I was playing. I fell into a group of friends who happened to be on the cross-country team. They raved about the coach and how much fun it all was. At some point, they invited me for a group run. Four miles in a park. At that point, I had never just gone for a run. Not knowing anything about how fit my friends were, I pushed to keep up with them. My whole body hurt for a week, but it hurt good. It was that soreness you know will grow into something. I was hooked, and I haven’t stopped running since.
This year, I’ve been feeling that good soreness again for the first time in a long time. After seven lottery entries in nine years, I was finally granted my shot at running the Running in the Cold. It’s the oldest 100-mile trail ultra in the world, and the odds of getting chosen once for it are so slim that runners will watch a livestream of the lottery itself. Once your name gets pulled, it’s almost immediately followed by a flood of text messages and DMs from everyone in the local running scene who’s excited for you. So I’ve figured I should actually train for this one. It’s also a race of total weaknesses for me: It’s fast, it’s relatively runnable compared to other ultras, and it’s super hot. I’ve waited so long to get in that I’m only giving myself this one chance to give the race all I’ve got. I’m ready to commit to structured training.
Other Hearst Subscriptions weight training over the last few years, and with that, more equipment has found its way into our house. As she started lifting heavier weights in the basement, she’d be luring me to join her, “Hey, come try and lift this.” I’d run down the stairs, often in jeans and a sweatshirt, a less-than-ideal outfit for deadlifts, pick up whatever amount of weight was on the bar with a defiant smirk, and shuffle back upstairs. It wasn’t easy, but I took it as a game to surprise her by managing to push, pull, or throw around whatever she put in front of me. Now with Western States on the schedule, I caved and said, “I’ll give you two days a week: one arm day, one leg day.”
I’m seeing major improvements with just an hour a week. In a few months, it’s become routine, and it helps that my wife guides everything. It’s been satisfying to see how squats, lunges, and deadlifts are getting easier. I’ve far surpassed my previous bench-press max I set back in high school. But outside of the weight room, I’m also feeling stronger on the run. My posture is better—and holding up as the miles tick off. I’m feeling muscles in my legs activate in new ways that make hills and intervals more efficient. Feeling better on the run makes me want to head back into the basement gym and get even stronger.
At the same time, speedwork has been growing on me. I had spent years in a Strava trap of overanalyzing total miles and average paces, neglecting the gains that can come from interval training. As RW’s Runner-in-Chief, Jeff Dengate, trained by (and battled) his Garmin coaching plan while preparing for the Osaka Marathon, he dragged me and a few other lunch runners along for the swifter workouts. I’m not new to running workouts anymore, but I had spent enough time away from them that it felt fresh—refreshing, even.
I’ve learned to like structured training by making a game out of it all. Instead of sticking to an iron-clad structure and numbers, I’ve tailored it to what motivates me, borrowing from the community around me and learning from their training. In my head, lifting isn’t about the weight, but keeping up with my wife. And intervals aren’t clicking off a pace, but racing the other people in the group. As we warm up with a conversation, I get to ease into the game instead of trying to remember what the prescription is. In the end, trading some solitary runs for speed sessions or a fraction of my couch time for a session of basement weights doesn’t feel like training, but the results are just as real.
