Why No American Men Have Won UTMB 100 (yet)?! Coach Sage Canaday ultra trail marathon analysis 2021

[Music] [Music] all right [Music] do [Music] hey everyone coach and hoka owneon athlete sage candy here with a bit of an analysis type of video we're going to talk about the utmb the ultra trail dumont blanc uh it's about 106 miles most years 33 000 feet of climbing it's like 10 000 feet of climbing 170 k uh famous race in chamonix france starting and ending in chamonix circumnavigating mount blanc great glacial mountain beautiful mountain uh going through italy and switzerland as well and you know there's a whole series of races there right the ccc the tds the occ uh to name a few but you know there's been some articles and stuff on the media i noticed lately about how why american men american no american man has won the utmb and people are speculating why we've had uh women american women win the race and set course records their most notably shout out to courtney dewalter who set the women's course record this year uh seventh overall in the race set the women's course record uh of course she's a legend though and she's won a lot of gnarly ultra races long distance races some outright uh phenomenal record setter her she lowered rory bozzio's course record who was also an american and is an american runner uh who would run an amazing time it was actually on her mutt running top 10 uh greatest performances of all time list very high up on that uh and she beat rory's time by over 10 minutes but it was actually on uh when rory ran i guess the course was a little shorter there's slight alterations over the years sometimes and sometimes you have hotter years than others but every runner has to run through the night now that's an important topic i'm going to get to in a bit here but uh you know 5 p.m 6 p.m start time everyone runs through the first night why haven't why is an american man one yet uh i'm going to speculate a bit on here and first i'm going to admit to my own flaws they're like wait a second sage you sucked at utmb you had a horrible race there yes i did i've had uh i've had bad experiences at hundred mile distances regardless of of what type of race it is right run rabbit run western states i had a rough one at western states rough one at utmb uh the first time i actually tried utmb was in 2015 it was going to be my first hundred i actually was doing pretty good i was in the lead pack top six about 40 miles in crossing the border into italy in the middle of the night i was clumsy i tripped and fell on a very non-technical part of the course most of the course is actually very non-technical as far as european mountain trails go uh or even u.s mountain trails it's not that technical but i was clumsy i fell tumbled into a sharp rock cut my knee open had to get stitches at the halfway point in cormier tried to foolishly keep on going because i wanted to finish and my knee was ballooned up i thought i was gonna do permanent damage had to get plucked off by a helicopter uh helicopter rescue uh a lot more affordable the rescue there than uh if you would if that happened in the u.s we'll put it that way but thanks to the race organization for uh rescuing me there 2017 i went back just went out slow and finished even slower i had a total meltdown i had stomach issues i wasn't trained for it i wasn't prepared well for it and i think i've learned personally a lot from that but we as we know in data and science n equals one stories aren't really the greatest thing uh so you know i've struggled in other hundred miles i struggled at western states thing is when i struggled at western states and walked it in the last 50k i could still get 11th place when i did that at utmb and struggled it and walked it in to finish i was like 50th place so the depth of field is the first thing i want to touch on it's a numbers game uh it's a lot bigger of a race than most races in the u.s these ultras in the u.s western states hard rocket they're very hard to get into it's a very small field size right only a couple hundred less than a 300 400 people right utmb you have over a thousand uh and a lot of elites from all over the world right so the competition depth uh is is very vast it's very vast and if you mess up a little bit you're gonna be fall out back in places and that is is especially true uh in the men's field now you know it's a numbers game how many elites out there elite american males actually had a shot at winning utmb most years uh maybe it's only a handful right uh there's really only five six seven eight guys maybe each year that actually have a realistic shot of winning the race and if you're a guy like francois dane or killian jornette uh you could run away with the win pretty uh with a pretty big margin of victory a lot of times uh especially francois i mean he just he ran his own race uh you know a couple years ago paul capel just ran away with it right uh and the top american men are not even close to him now we will say you know tim tolson my hookah teammate he's been extremely consistent gotten third twice there uh and even before that david laney got third and so we could look at some of their training but in terms of the numbers game uh we just have a small sample size each year of elite american men going over there uh and if a couple of them have a bad race then we have no american men probably in the top ten so you know it is a very small sample size and that's not always great data uh some people get injured people have over trained people have burned it hot racing other hundreds over the summer in the pandemic year of course this year it was harder for people to travel out there um you know i was supposed to go out there and race but of course i had a pulmonary embolism and trying to get my health and strength back i knew i couldn't handle that especially on blood thinners um but i digress there uh on the women's side you know it's no excuse there is a smaller number of women in the race though right it's it's most years there's only 20 25 of the field size is female at utmb uh it's it's there's not as many elite women however that's no excuse because courtney she ran such a phenomenal time in performance seventh overall uh running that amazing time what 22 hours 22 and a half hours uh i mean that's a really freaking good time on that course so like hands down she's you know way above the rest phenomenal performance and there's been a lot of those top women performances uh even with american women doing really well but after that it falls off quite a bit because there's not that many actual uh not as many i should say elite women in the race right uh because of those ratios it's just a numbers game like i said but no excuses there we will touch on what some of the european runners especially i'd say european runners who are used to training in the alps uh or dolomites or pyrenees or any mountain range over there um what they do differently and kind of what the mindset is i think that allows them to succeed more at a race like utmb um because the trails are a bit different over there compared to a lot of american style ultra marathons especially american hundred mile races uh so you know sandy actually wrote a really great article on our higher running coaching website i'll link to it in the description below about she had observed a lot of the finalists in the golden trail series uh we've hanging out with them in nepal a couple years ago people like killian jornette people that have done really well ruth croft uh to name a few uh you know what what do they do differently to do really well in all these historic mountain races right and not just ultras but shorter mountain races like sierras and all and all that and one of the things she found is that you know they don't put as much of an emphasis on going all or nothing with super high mileage training you know always stacking the strava weekly mileage 130 140 miles a week you know obsessing over the vertical gain i mean killian gets in a lot of vehicle don't get me wrong uh but not all running it's not all running right a lot of them do cycling they they cross train uh they do other sports they like actual alpine climbing a lot of them a lot of them come from schema backgrounds right kilian francois uh they do a lot of the skimo you could rack up a ton of vertical in the winter you're going on some of these same mountain ranges same courses uh and you're practicing that power hiking motion with poles uh very coordinated pole uh plant your you know rack and vertical you're working on the downhills you're working your quads uh right you got to be in balance when you're skiing and it's a good cross-training activity the skimo training lends itself very well to summer mountain running and you see that with a lot of european mountain runners i'm not just saying skeemo but like mixing it up with cycling as well and just having this passion and this this excitement for the mountains because a lot of the trails in europe especially in that area of france and switzerland and italy are right in the mountains whereas most of the us if you're on a trail you're in a flat land somewhere uh unless you live in the rockies or the west coast or somewhere like that or the appalachian mountains uh so they're very different trails as well and we'll get into that the terrain it's not really an excuse but it's not so much that utmb is so much of a harder course for american men i think it's the fact that if you go to any race uh be it sierra's and all or zagama a lot of times americans kind of get thrown off their rocker as well because as i like to say whenever you go to europe everything's steeper everything's steeper and everything's generally a little bit more technical now utv is not technical it's not technical at all uh it's not totally buffed out like western states is but as far as like mountain trails go a lot of it's double track there's a lot of ski access roads you're running through towns on some stretches of pavement even but it's steep it is steep and that's how it is at sierra's and all as well it's a very fast course very runnable course but it's very steep and you look back it's like when was the last time an american man won sierra's in all or zagama uh they don't win uh recently at least since i've been involved in mutt running since 2012 so uh you know it's it's not just utmb it's it's a lot of races across the world uh that you know i think american males especially struggle at the females seem to be more adaptable and we got some stars there but again it's a small sample size that you're looking at so you know courtney's exceptional uh rory was is exceptional uh there's you know tons of other women uh in different disciplines as well so with the training nitty gritty i mean i think part of it's those mileage totals uh you know sometimes the a lot of the european international runners will run less weekly mileage in total they're still doing the climbing and the vertical but they're not as obsessed with it right if they're running 80 miles a week or 90 miles a week that's okay they don't need to run 125 miles a week or 200k a week they could do a little bit less they mix it up more uh they're just playing in the mountains more relaxed even a guy like tim tullis and you see him training out in the sierras right mammoth lakes he's got a lot of the big vertical relief he's mixing it up he's not doing uh you know insanely high mileage he may do the 100 mile 90 mile weeks and he's racking up some vertical but he's not going to burn himself out totally at least in the years that he got third at utmb uh quite so much whereas i think some some of us american guys we get you know too crazy with the training mileage and the the vertical and we uh get too tired going into the race and that's kind of how i felt uh in 2017. i just came out flat uh not just you know didn't taper well overcooked it and it's easy because once things go wrong in the mountains there on that course it is very unforgiving and you're going to have a really rough day and things could go exponentially bad because it's it's such a challenge you know looking at that we have the depth of utmb we have the difference in terrain we have the difference in attitude of training but also the difference in attitude in racing i think a lot of the europeans like i said if you look at like killian or francois like they're they come from a mountain culture they really enjoy the mountains a lot of the u.s sponsored elite ultra runners uh you know including myself we come from a track and road background uh you know we ran in college we went cross-country and track maybe we dabbled in road marathons then maybe we moved to a place where there were mountains like i came from near sea level right uh other athletes i know you know they moved to the mountains to train on trails but they didn't grow up in the mountains they didn't grow up on them in the mountains and we don't necessarily train extensively on the utmb course or on in in europe all the time we're trying to find out routes maybe here in colorado at super high altitude or in the sierras or something like that or in the appalachian mountains and they're all very different these ranges are all very different and if you don't get in some of that running on very fast downhills but then very steep and and power hiking uphills you're not going to train your leg musculature very specifically and you're not going to be very efficient for all the climbing and descending you have to do at utmb and if i've learned anything from that i'd say you know this is no excuse because courtney trains in colorado too but training in colorado sometimes is a double-edged shore because you're up at so high altitude right you go out to the hard rock course and francois dain did really well there you're at such a high altitude you can't move as fast whereas at utmb you top out at about 8 500 feet you're at a little altitude but not the super high altitude you need to move fast you need to move fast and you need to be able to run downhill at you know a lot of six minute mile splits are happening on some of those downhills uh it's amazing it's amazingly fast and to take that quad pounding uh on those descents and those steep grades you know negative 20 grade uh for four thousand five thousand feet down you have to have really strong legs and again back to the schema the vertical uh you know being able to use your poles very efficiently that's a big difference whereas if you go to a lot of us races mine is hard rock minus hard rock i will say but you know the western states the lake sonomas even the leadvilles they're very much more runnable it's more of a pure running thing you don't have to carry very much gear you're not required to carry a whole heavy backpack that weighs four or five pounds uh a lot of times you you know you have pacers i'm not saying the pacers is a is a huge benefit for elites but uh it's a lot different whereas you go to utmb you gotta you got all the gear you have to carry in your pack you've gotta you probably should use trekking poles if you're coordinated with them i'm gonna use trekking poles when i go back to utmb uh but i'm getting into ski mode more now so that makes sense uh but you also have to be very sufficient in the mountains at night right with the 5 pm start everyone runs through that first night most people run through two nights when i suffered my finish at utmb i was going it was starting to get dark for the second night and i was like i do not want to pull out that headlamp again but most people do deal with two nights at utmb or at least part of the second night and it's it's night running is hard if you don't practice it and you're not used to it which a lot of americans aren't because if you're an elite american ultra runner and you run western states and finish well you could finish in the daylight at western states right you start in the in the morning you run all day you could finish before it gets dark same thing at leadville if you're running a really fast time at a 100 like leadville you could finish during the day so we're not used to running all night so much and at utmb it's unique because on some weather years where it gets kind of cold you have to be up high on you know some of the biggest climbs on the course uh grand cold foray climbing up and it's still dark and it could be very cold and you have to be able to utilize your gear very quickly so you don't get cold and start getting hypoglycemic and just burning out or having your muscles lock up on you whereas then the sun comes up during the day you're coming through champagne lock it could start getting really hot it could be a hot kind of humid day as you're coming into chamonix or valercine to to finish so you know that's the kind of time frame you're looking at as an elite guy hitting those splits around the utmb course and you know they say oh you know the risk doesn't start till champagne lock well you know a lot of times the elite guys break it open at cormier at the halfway point right and the guys that start in the lead end in the lead a lot of guys certainly don't end in the lead but you know that lead pack goes out at sub six minute mile pace first mile through town and you know 20 30 guys go out that pace well those guys in that lead pack are some of the guys that are probably gonna be top five in the race uh you could pace yourself patiently maybe and do with dave laney or tim tolson work your way up till third come from 20th place work your way up to third but actually when you got to be in that lead pack probably or you know you could pull one of my hook teammates french runner ludo he came from behind and won but that's that's pretty rare for the men's race at utmb so the strategy the mindset i think is very different and i think with american runners we tend to think all or nothing go big or go home you know we've done these big weeks on strava maybe we overcooked ourselves uh you know personally i think trying to race 200s in a summer is a liability and makes it very hard to peak at utmb of course francois dane who won utmb this year for the man he won hard rock as well right before so that's you know that's an n equals one phenomenal performance but i'm not saying that's probably the best bet for most people uh and if you're running a race like western states for example that race is just totally different like western states net downhill you know the limiting factor is usually the heat uh it's just a totally different dynamic it's it's almost all very runnable like uh it's so much so much faster of a race compared to utmb where you basically are forced to power hike a lot of the uphills uh because they're so steep and because the climbs are so long and it's rare to find that kind of smooth trail that's steep in the u.s that keeps going up and up and up for 4 000 feet even in the mountains here in colorado you got you know technical rocks high altitude uh and trailheads that start already pretty high so to get those big climbs you have to scout those out you have to practice running down ski access roads really steep grades you have to practice with your poles if you're going to use poles and you have to dial in that night running and again it's something i'm still learning again i'm no extra on this i'm this is all speculation on my part but you know i was just looking at you know knowing the course knowing some of the races knowing how some other elites american males at least train or or you know the kind of lifestyle or background they come from this is just kind of my subjective analysis so comment below comment below check out sandy's article she's got a good summary of the kind of the difference in european mountain running attitude or world international mountain running out attitude compared to just kind of the us mindset uh because you know it's it's very different i think and that's i think part of it really um but you know comment below what do you think why hasn't an american male 1 utmb yet uh you know i'd love to go back there and try to do really well uh it's a bucket list for my for me it's an amazing race amazing organization i think it's the greatest long distance ultra marathon mountain race in the world and just a really spectacular event uh but very lucrative so you know comment below what what what's going on here if you agree or disagree with my analysis on this video what you'd like to see uh any other insights comment below thank you so much for tuning in to this uh analysis video i got more vlogs coming your way more training talks shorter videos uh thanks so much to title sponsor hoka onion keeping the dream alive as well as all you patreon supporters for keeping this channel going uh hope you're doing well be sure to subscribe like these videos if you like them check out my playlist hope you're doing well again and stay tuned for more vo2 max productions [Music]

Channel: Vo2maxProductions

Views: 30,668

Rating: 4.9400749 out of 5

Keywords: sage canaday, sage running, vo2max productions, running tips, running form, ultramarathon, trail running, any surface any distance, run form, aerobic running, long run, running strength, mountain running, Boston marathon, marathon training, running speed, how to run faster, running cadence, running stride, running shoes, trail ultra, running nutrition, vegan athletes, utmb, ultra trail

Id: vs-iu1rnJMU

Length: 19min 50sec (1190 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021