6 Weeks to UTA

Train where you are at.

Now is not the time for panic kilometres. If you can do more, sure, consider doing a little bit more but significantly increasing your training stress will greatly increase the risk of injury.

You have to train where you are at.

Comparison is the thief of joy. There is no value comparing your training to what other athletes are doing on Strava.

Forget about Larry long run.

  • Maybe they are doing too much.
  • Maybe they are not doing enough.
  • Definitely you should be doing the training that is right for you irrespective of what others are doing.

Focus on what you can do. Focus on maintaining consistency and continuing to build fitness, endurance and strength.

If you miss a few runs your training is not ruined. Your race day will be a reflection of all of the training that you did do and not the couple of sessions you missed.

The last of the long runs.

It is about now we start considering doing the last long conditioning exercise for UTA. It can easily take six weeks to fully recover from a large bout of overload stress from prolonged endurance activity so avoid cramming a massive run into the last month before race day.

This last big outing should be in the vicinity of 1.5 to 2.0 times your current long run distance. This way your final Super Sunday is relative to what you are currently doing and your current fitness. This means it isn’t tethered to your target race distance but makes sense in respect to what you can reasonably achieve in terms of time or distance.

Strength to get down.

We have counted over 10,000 steps in the UTA 100, over 6000 in the UTA 50 and several million in the Fern Bauer section of the UTA 22. What goes up must come down! Going up steps can be slow and the cardiovascular requirements are easily apparent when you find yourself sucking in the big gulps part way up a never ending cascade of steps – however, what will ultimately smash your legs to pieces is the somewhat equal amount of elevation you must also lose.

Condition yourself to these eccentric forces by integrating undulating terrain in your training and consider running some of the downhills a little bit harder on occasion. Prepare your quads for Kedumba.

Pack it up, pack it in.

Do you have all of your mandatory gear sorted?

It is definitely worthwhile understanding what equipment you must carry on race day.

It will be beneficial for you to condition yourself to running with this equipment prior to race day.

If you are running UTA 100 we also recommend you get it checked off ahead of time.