8 tips for 100-mile trail races - from Anton Krupicka

[Music] mentally I think that's important part of it the mental preparation is maybe something that's overlooked sometimes people will get very intimidated by the distance and what takes you from 80 kilometers or 50 miles up to the hundred mile distance is your mental kind of approach to it the first time that I ever ran 100 miles I had never run further than 50 miles before and that was only three weeks before the race so it was definitely a mental thing level 100 yeah 2006 the first time I wanted I made me feel like I could do well on this fine um you know it's weird because you finish a hundred miles like that and it's especially your first time it's a super humbling thing because I mean I got 280 miles then and I always knew I was gonna finish but it I was walking I was like there's just no way I want to walk the entire way to the finish but you have that I don't know that experience of coming out of a low unexpectedly and I think that's sort of the quintessential ultra experience is going through those peaks and valleys of energy and emotions and realizing that you can rebound from a really little point and that goes back to the mental game is it's not gonna go perfect all day at the hundred mile distance ever and you're gonna have to it becomes a problem-solving game of well do I need extra calories or water or do going to back off the pace a little bit and just realizing that that's the whole game is enduring through those variables and being prepared for that mentally that there's gonna be a tough spot but it can get better later on and what do you do when it really starts to have the whole discomfort thing for me I have to decide before I start the race before I'm on the starting line that I'm gonna finish no matter what because if I go in with any doubt in my mind it's easy to rationalize a DNF while you're on the racecourse cuz yeah because you're uncomfortable for a long time and so but if I go in with the conviction that I'm going to finish when those doubts arrives you just you just push aside the thought of dropping out and and just work towards an intermediate goal well I just want to get to the next aid station and you know or the top of this hill on then to the next day station and so on you can't think about the end until you're actually getting near the end otherwise yeah it just becomes demoralizing you want to drop yeah and so what do you wish you'd known before you did your first one oh that's a good question actually um well I'm gonna flip it around actually and say that the ignorance that you have going into your first 100-mile race is sort of underrated I think and really valuable and for me about was certainly the case for me if I had gone with conventional wisdom beforehand I think I would have limited myself and maybe not have had as good of a race as I ended up having or a successful of a race and so I think it's important to go in with an open mind to what kind of experience you can have that it isn't gonna necessarily be this kind of soul-crushing I don't know negative thing but yeah it can be a really positive and it's gonna be really hard no matter what uh what I wish I'd known yeah I guess that the whole the whole cliche that it doesn't always get worse it turns out to be true maybe it's hard to believe that until it actually happens to you but that's something that's worth knowing beforehand that yeah you can be feeling horrible and still feel great later on in the race saying somebody's gonna do that first hundred my last name next year what's your biggest piece of advice for them before the 100 mile race to do with training you need to get a couple of long runs you know and maybe that comes in the form of a race and by long I mean seven or eight hours on your feet kind of thing which for me ends up being around 50 miles but the distance isn't so important as time on your feet I think because you know maybe someone in the mid pack a 50 mile of training run would take 10 or 12 hours or something which I think it ends up being a little too long so helps to do intermediate races along the way because it a race you have the support of East Asians and that kind of thing that's nice to build up to the hundred mile distance but don't underestimate getting a couple of those long-ago efforts in I think it's important to get that time on your feet especially before your first hundred mile or in subsequent hundred miles having that experience that first experience under your belt I don't think it's as necessary to do all the long runs but the first time definitely and if nothing else you try out different kinds of fuel you build mental confidence for enduring the distance yeah long runs are important and then during your first 100 miler and what's your top piece of advice there during the race I would say my top advice is to stay in the moment and don't project too far into the into the rate the distance of the race because it goes back like I saying you can have a demoralizing low point at 25 miles and you're like oh gosh I'm only a quarter of the way through Andy it's really easy to get down on yourself but especially with so much distance remaining that's a long time for things to turn around - so just - just remember during the race that there's going to be low patches they might come earlier than you expect and that it will get better and anything around nutrition during the race I mean I avoid talking about nutrition because it's so individual it's the I don't think there are really any hard and fast rules so many different things work for people I stick to sugar and water and salt but that's I've had pretty good success with that I'm jealous jealous jealous yeah sorry I've you know it's all the same like gels in can do the same thing basically you know coming berries and a GU chomp or essentially the same thing so yeah some kind of quick sugar and then but a lot of people that doesn't work for them their stomachs go bad they need more solid food so I don't really have both it but just you should be trying to get in two or three hundred calories an hour and probably drinking trying to stay on top of your hydration before you get behind a lot of the races in the states are hot so that's always an issue it seems like host race then how should you recover from hundra milah well I don't know how you should recover from a hundred-mile er for me it takes a while like if I'm running 100 miles it's been an all-out effort and I need a month of like well at least a week of no running at all maybe two weeks it takes me a while to be hungry again after 100 miler but yeah then just eating normal food and you don't love cross-training now yeah so I mean cross-training is definitely important part of my overall training biking in the summer skiing in the winter so now being the end of November ski most season is upon us and I'll be doing that through the spring basically yeah well hope see you back in the UK in the spring thank you very much for talking to us today [Music]

Channel: Wild Ginger Trail & Ultra Running

Views: 146,118

Rating: 4.9494586 out of 5

Keywords: anton krupicka, trail running, la sportiva, wild ginger, buff, kendal mountain festival, fell running, freestak, 100 miles, 100 mile race, 100 miler, leadville, western states, 100, running, training, fitness, nutrition, sport psychology

Id: KbcJiUgqJA0

Length: 8min 8sec (488 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 27 2017