Be flexible enough that you can adjust to life’s stress both inside and out of your training plan. It’s mindful to refrain from viewing your training plan as set in stone.

When planning your training, avoid placing your most rigorous or time-consuming workouts on your most stressful days in other areas of life. Monitoring stress from all areas of life is crucial in choosing when to set up hard or long training days. The right amount of stress causes us to get stronger and more resilient, but too much burns us out. Being realistic is key in generating just enough stress to elicit a response, but not overreach so far that you struggle to recover, or get injured. Big days are fine when met with proper recovery, but reaching too far or hard day-in-and-day-out is unsustainable.

It’s fine to go big when the time is right, but ignoring the necessities of rest and recovery is a mistake. The first strategy with newcomers is to ditch the “go big or go home” mentality. 5 Tips for Your First Ultraīefore we dive into the specifics of training and the complete 50K training plan, there are a few key pillars to understand before tackling this new beast of a distance. For that, I hope to provide some useful experiences to prepare you for your first ultramarathon. These emotions are normal and-ironically enough-often sought out by folks after completing their first ultramarathon, when they sign up to tackle an even longer race.Įmbracing this mental and physical challenge can make the journey as exciting as the event itself, but it’s certainly no reason to ignore the experience of others. You know you have to put in the work, but the ‘how’ questions that often fill your mind before the start of this journey trigger those feelings of anxiety. After signing up for an ultramarathon and officially committing, a flood of emotions will begin. Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members!Ĭommitting to a journey where you will embark by foot farther than you have ever traveled before is equal parts exciting and scary.

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