How to Train for an Ultramarathon With a Full-Time Job
Training for an ultramarathon takes time. Unfortunately, so does having a job.
Throw in family, commuting, cooking dinner, walking the dog and occasionally wanting to do something that has absolutely nothing to do with running, and suddenly that ultra marathon training plan you found online starts looking fairly unrealistic. The good news is that you don't need to organise your entire life around running to train for an ultra.
You do need to be consistent, you need to use the time you have well and, occasionally, you need to accept that the perfect training week isn't going to happen. For most of us, ultra training has to fit around life rather than life fitting around ultra training.
Here's how I would approach it.
How Much Time Do You Need to Train for an Ultramarathon?
This is usually one of the first questions runners ask.
How many hours a week do I need? The slightly annoying answer is that it depends. Someone preparing to complete their first fairly runnable 50K has very different requirements to somebody trying to race a mountainous 100 miler. Your training history matters too. If you've spent the last five years consistently running four or five times a week, you are starting from a very different place to somebody who has recently moved up from 10K.
Rather than deciding you need to hit a magic number of miles every week, look at what you can consistently sustain. Six hours of training that you can complete week after week is far more useful than planning ten hours, managing it once and spending the following week exhausted.
Consistency is boring but it also works remarkably well.
Stop Trying to Fit Everything In
One of the biggest mistakes busy runners make is trying to include every type of training they have ever read about.
Suddenly your hobby has become a second full-time job. Intervals, hill reps, the long run, strength and conditioning, the list goes on. If time is limited, I would start by identifying the sessions that give you the biggest return for the race you are preparing for.
For many ultra runners, that might look something like:
One longer endurance session
One quality session such as hills or threshold work
Two or three easier runs
One or two short strength sessions
Enough recovery to actually absorb it
The exact balance changes depending on the athlete and the race, but there should be a reason for everything in the week.
Adding sessions simply because you feel like you should be doing them is a fairly good way to make training unnecessarily complicated.
Put the Important Sessions in First
Before planning anything else, look at your week and ask yourself these questions
Where does the long run realistically fit?
Where can you do your harder session without arriving already exhausted?
When are work and family commitments highest?
Build around those things. If Saturday morning is consistently free, protect it for your long run. If Wednesday is your busiest day at work, perhaps that becomes an easy run or rest day rather than trying to squeeze in hill reps at 9pm. This sounds incredibly obvious, but plenty of training plans do the opposite. They decide what the athlete should do first and then try to force their life around it.
I would rather have a slightly less conventional training week that somebody can actually complete.
Train by Time, When It Makes More Sense
Mileage can become a bit of an obsession in ultra running.
But an hour running steep trails is not the same training load as an hour jogging along a flat canal. If you're time-poor, thinking in time rather than distance can make training much easier to manage.
You might have 60 minutes before work.
Great.
Run for 60 minutes.
You don't need to turn it into 12km just because that's what your training plan says. This is especially useful with trail and ultra training where terrain, elevation and conditions can make pace almost meaningless. It also stops an easy run accidentally becoming considerably longer than planned because you're determined to hit a round mileage number.
Our training plans are designed to help you do the most with your time. Check them out below.
Make Your Long Runs Specific, Not Just Long
he long run obviously has an important role in ultramarathon training.
But longer isn't automatically better. If you only have three hours available, think about how to make those three hours useful.
Preparing for a hilly race? Find hills.
Preparing for a technical trail race? Get onto technical trails.
Preparing for an event where you expect to hike a lot? Practise hiking properly rather than insisting on running every climb.
Use the session to practise your race-day fuelling, hydration, kit and pacing as well. Suddenly that three-hour run is doing far more than simply adding mileage to your week. This is particularly important when you don't have endless amounts of training time.
Make the sessions you can do count.
You Probably Don't Need a Huge Back-to-Back Every Weekend
Back-to-back long runs have almost become synonymous with ultra training.
Saturday long run. Wake up Sunday with legs made of wood.
Go running again.
They can absolutely have a place, particularly when preparing for longer ultras and multi-day events. But they are a tool, not a compulsory part of being an ultra runner. If a big weekend leaves you so tired that your training falls apart until Wednesday, it probably isn't helping as much as you think.
Sometimes a long run on Saturday followed by 60 to 90 minutes easy on Sunday is plenty. Sometimes hiking on tired legs is more useful. Sometimes you don't need a second session at all.
The goal is to build fatigue resistance without spending half your life recovering from your fatigue-resistance training.
Don't Steal Time From Sleep
Getting up at 4:30am to run before work sounds incredibly committed, but is it useful?
Doing it while regularly sleeping five hours a night isn't clever. Training only works if you can recover from it. If squeezing another run into the week means consistently cutting your sleep, I would seriously question whether the extra session is worth it. There is always a temptation with ultra training to think more is better.
More miles. More vert. More time on feet.
But training is only useful when your body has an opportunity to adapt to it. Sometimes an extra hour in bed is better preparation than another hour of running.
A Realistic Ultra Training Week Around Work
There is no perfect weekly structure, but for someone working Monday to Friday it could look something like this:
Monday: Rest or short strength session
Tuesday: Quality run, perhaps hills or threshold work
Wednesday: Easy run
Thursday: Rest or strength
Friday: Easy aerobic run
Saturday: Long trail run with race-specific practice
Sunday: Short easy run, hike or recovery depending on training load
That gives you five potential training days without needing every weekday evening to disappear into running. At different stages of training you could increase or reduce that load. The important thing is that the structure works repeatedly.
Make Ultra Training Part of Your Life, Not Your Entire Life
Training for an ultra should require commitment, and there is always a sacrifice to be made somewhere else.
The question is what else and how much can you sacrifice?
There will be weekends where the long run takes priority and mornings where the alarm goes off earlier than you would ideally like. That's part of it. But if your training programme only works when nothing else happens in your life, it isn't a very good programme.
The best ultra marathon training plan is one that gets you fitter while still being sustainable enough to follow for months at a time. That is also one of the biggest advantages of personalised 1:1 running coaching.
We can move sessions, change training load, work around busy periods and concentrate your available time on the sessions that will actually move you towards your goal.
You still have to do the training. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way around that bit yet.
But you shouldn't need to give up the rest of your life to do it.
Train Smart. Run Wild.
Training for an Ultra Around a Busy Life?
Our 1:1 running coaching is built around your fitness, race goals and the time you actually have available.
Rather than forcing your life around a fixed programme, we build the programme around you and adjust it as training progresses.
Because the best plan isn't the one that looks perfect on paper.
It's the one you can actually train with.
