Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
Training miles for an ultra
When training for an ultra, how many miles do you make your longest training run(s)? And how does that compare to the distance of the actual race?
I'm doing The Wall in June next year, which is 69 miles. The training plan on Rat Race's website isn't really appropriate for me personally (and I'm sure a lot of the participants) as it starts with a weekly mileage of 14 miles and goes up to a weekly mileage of 40 miles a couple of weeks prior to the event (with the longest training run being 20 / 25 miles). I already do around 60 miles a week and that is increasing each week.
So I'm wondering what your longest training runs are when preparing for an ultra?
Thank you 
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
Depends on the indivdual a lot of runners get up to 60 miles a meek in their max weeks, if not more, some other like myself find that frankly I struggle to do more than 30 a week and stay uninjured.
look at 50 mile / 100km plans, these are close enough to give you a good starting point.
Relentless forward progress is a good book, with some plans in it.
also look at the ultra ladies plans they seem good. :- http://www.trailrunevents.com/ul/schedule-50m.asp
they also have a 100m plan. just treat them as km's instead of miles and that seems a reasonable plan then.
Longest run:- a lot actually have a long weekend.... For example 20 and 15m sat/sun or similar. I've done a back to back Marathon weekend, so two marathons, taking them very slow as training runs, that was good. I tried to make sure the second was as fast as the first so I had to pace sensibly on the first, and gave me a fun target to beat on day two.
one thing is you want to tire yourself over the runs, but not so much that you cannot carry on training.
i've been reading quite a bit lately on lowish mileage training but ensuring you do 50% of your miles most weeks in a long weekend run.
lots of different ways, find out what you are comfortable doing, and how much time you have, and go from there.
Can also look at a shorter ultra say 50km as a long training run, it's more fun than doing it on your own.
Possibly if you lack motivation for the long weekend runs, sign up and do a Marathon each month, not hard, but just as a training run in company.