Jan Ryerse's Training for Kettle Moraine

A standard training program to prepare for 50 or 100 mile ultras is to gradually increase the distance of your long runs and to do a 50K and/or 50 miler a month or so before the 100. That's what I did prior to my first 100, the Kettle Morraine 100, in June 1998. At weekly intervals I increased the distance of my long run by about 5 miles (see first histogram), gradually working up to about 35 miles. Then I ran a 50K trail run about 6 weeks before the 100 and a 50 miler about 3 weeks before the 100. Some people prefer to run the 50 miler 6 weeks to 2 months before the 100 but I seem to recover quickly and 3 weeks recovery worked fine for me. I mixed walking and running on the long training runs, usually walking the uphills and running most everything else. I would take a short food break every 4-8 miles. Its best to find out what type of course you'll be running your 100 on and try to find similar terrain to do some of your trianing on. I also did some practice night runs to be sure my lights worked as expected and to get used to wearing and carrying them.

"http://www.run100s.com/stanj/Freebies/jr_km.htm" (updated: 3/11/99) stanj@run100s.com