Quality control - The key to improvements

Often runners arrive to a sort of a wall in case of volume, when they don't know how to break through. How to keep on improving. Of course, running or total endurance training volume can be an answer and 85% of a time, it is the answer. Of course the 15% rest, in case of training, can be found in mobility, strength and conditioning and supplementary activities. Training knowledge too. Periodization and more.

How to increase volume ?

There is only one way. One single way. Controlling intensity. If you've tried many times and fail. If you've tried many times and fall of the wagon multiple times throughout the decades, well, this is simply because you failed to control your efforts. Or failed to dial in those efforts more or less precisely to control them. A couple of heart rates too high and off you go. Just a couple, not more ! Just a couple ! Then you  are done. 

In case of running, right now, intensity is measures by heart rate. At this moment, the best heart rate belt in the market is the Coros HRM. It is non intrusive, no chaffing, no issues with it and you can use it in order to precisely dial in those intervals or zone 2-3 workouts. 
Cyclist do the same. They use heart rate to control effort and use power to measure effort. They want to do a recovery ride an off season long ride or an off season lactate threshold ride, they simply use heart rate. Easy done. When of course training seriously, they dial in those details even more precisely with Power Numbers and Lactate Measurements. 

How to find your zones ?

It is super easy. It might take a couple of months to do so, but it is not hard ! Look. A coach might need a 2 to 4 years to really understand the physiological responses of an athlete. A special training regimen has it's results often after significant amount of recoveries and after significant amounts of application. A fully planned season and it's outcomes is important, but it's impact on the next season, is what makes coaching special. 
Athletes often don't get this. Training logs are great for that. Look at what you've done in the last 3 to 5 years. Look at some very specific training results. Look at your race paces and race results. 
Now, explore this last coached year's volumes. Look at the results in the year. Then do the same next year. Make observations not only on objective but subjective things too. How did you feel, how do you feel, how did it go, how were your sessions. What are your angoisses ? What are your frustrations ? What are your problems ? 

So to find your zones, you need a couple of months. Use the Maffetone method in a couple of training sessions every single week. That will help you understand your heart rate reactions. 

Calculate your Zone 2 =  180 minus your age minus 10
For a 40 yo man, it is 140 & and 140 - 10 so your Zone 2 is = 130 to 140bpm

To really understand the procedure, 3 times a week, do a regular run. That can be flat or gradual uphill in this Zone 2. Use the same spots. Get a notebook and write down your date of training, time in the Zone, your average Heart Rate and the Paces. 

• 20052026 32min 134bpm 4:55/km
• 23052026 35min 136bpm 4:32/km
• 28052026 42min 135bpm 4:45/km

Have at least 2 to 3months of these, 3 to 4times a week. Then you look for surrounding workouts. Mark everything well, either on Strava or on your running apps. Name the correct routine on each workout, so it is easy to find. 

Okay, now you can see that, when you run a controlled threshold interval workout, your Zone 2 pace drops next day only 3 to 8 seconds a kilometer. When you do an uncontrolled workout or a long run with friends, it drops 20 to 30 seconds the next day. Maybe still down by 10 to 15sec the day after. 

You can also run a couple of weeks, especially at off season, exclusively in Zone 2 and under. This way you can also see, if your Zone 2 is fatiguing you, maybe it is too high. Or on the contrary, you got some great fitness potential and your Zone 2 could be 3 to 5beats higher. Very often people think it is a good thing when doing Maffetone method, but actually, there is absolutely no need for the Zone 2 to be higher. Zone 2 is zone 2. What you can have is more zones than 5, to understand what is going on in your body. You also will understand physiology of your functions and this is what I am talking about. 

For instance, when I am very fit, I push my Zone 2 down, so most of my training sessions is @ 125 to 135bpm. Then I have this still very aerobic grey zone of 135 to 145. That is sort of ultra distance race intensity. I then have this 5 beat transitional zone to 150. It becomes hard, but not that hard. I still can hold this heart rate for very very long, but for that couple of seconds of gain in speed, I pay higher price for the recovery. Than there is that low lactate zone of 15O to 157. In case of high intensity training, that is where I got the most benefits. Good quality training, with very very short recovery time. I believe, that this is the most important training zone to be used in case of high intensity training. I can do that 4 to 6 times a week, and dip into that during a long run. I can hold on to a regime like that for months on end ! 
Then we are here @ high threshold of 158 to 165. At the age of 40+ I prefer to reserve very special occasions to make an effort worth it in this zone. After I am fatigued and recovery can be long. 3 to 4 days, especially if I did constant long efforts, like 3 x 15minutes at 163 to 165. Loads of acid, loads of muscular inbalance. Risk of injury, especially on trails, risk of over pushing, less control.
165plus. Right now I am not aiming for this heart rate in any of my training sessions. I also haven't seen over 173bpm for a long time. Last race 169, last big effort the Tuesday before, 171bpm. I preserve these efforts for tests, strava segments and race efforts. 

Periodization

Very important. So, you need to know that you cannot hold on to fitness. Like you do 10hours in the gym every week, with bench presses and heavy squats. The moment you want to run loads of elevation gain, higher volume, more speed, prepare for a race, something has to give. Either your gym efforts or your knees. Simple as that. Your meniscus won't like the mix of heavy lifting and hard pounding on the descents. Even your triceps and back won't like the mix of heavy loading then endurance using poles for hours. 
The same true to simple endurance. You cannot be running only in zone 2, you cannot hold onto your VO2max season, feeling like a god. You cannot run back to back records at your threshold max during monthly half marathons. 
Just like heart rate variability, your body likes changing. You body also improves with change ! You need to change it up , all the time and most of the time ! 

Work is paying off

Unfortunately I greatly messed up a race yesterday. Lost path at around 2-3km already. I was up in front of the race around 4 to 5th position. Feeling like a king. Cardio low, legs fresh, roaming like a champion. Easy flying. Not even felt like challenged. In control, as I even could have gone faster, but said to myself, wait it out, just enjoy while it last. Anyways, 1 hour into the race, it will be hard as ! Then 3km into the race, I already had 5 and needed like 5minutes still to catch up the last participant. I started jogging it in, caught up with a friend and ran home together. 17km jog.

But I already had some signs at the beginning of this week. I went to do a repeat workout on a hard segment. 8minutes of hard climbing. The segment is around 610m long and climbs 165m. Runnable for 1min then steepens up as ! It is held by an old local champion who used to train there. My friend told me to forget it as he is fit as. However you know, in case of segments, I am quiet confident. Just like in races, in segments, course knowledge worth 30% effort. So the time is 8:23. My strava did not pick the segments correctly, probably cause I did not find the end properly. But ! I ran 8:25 on the first repeat and 8:15 on the second .What is very very promising. 

Then for the rest of the week I took it very very easy. I jogged every day and did very very slow hiking with friends. Friday off. I woke up with no alarm every single day. I stopped strength training 2 weeks ago. I stopped post workout protein and creatine 3 weeks ago. It has been 4 weeks I am eating pure. I always eat great, but not that pure. You know, I might have time to time a glass of ice cream, some biscuits and chocolate. I might have jar of peanut butter or almond butter, chips and pizza. Not anymore. I just abuse the steamer. Morning porridge with poppy and sugar. Midi, potatoes with other steamed veggies and raw veggies. Evening steamed rice with other steamed veggies and salad. Fish 3 times a week and meat once a week. No dessert. Eat till full from the main meal. I liberally re-serve from the rice and celery sticks, even three times. No issues here. I might use some olives, sun dried tomatoes, or if not, little olive oil and salted tomatoes. But I make my rice better and better, after 25years of rice cooking, it is getting really dialled in. 

Training 

The training cycle is important. Cycling training. Recycling training. Getting into phases. Periodization ! Having staples is like grasping on to a winning bid on the bourse, that is turning into a loosing option. 

Periodization is complicated as science, but if you don't want to get flooded with too many options, it can be simple. The only thing you need is nutrition and intensity control. 

1. You need to understand race dynamics, race speed, elevation type, terrain, terrain and elevation variation. 

2. In my case, that was 15km race with D+1000 on quite technical 10km terrain after 5km running start. 

3. I needed fitness of running fast. So did like a month of VO2max style interval training. Starting with 2 weeks on non technical terrain and going way faster than race speed. 1 tempo run ad libidum with friends, already running a couple of big runs like 3 x 300m of elevation gain @ 20min*3 or 15 + 8min climb. Then started on more technical up and down 1 to 4min Vo2max circuits for the second two weeks. Then turned these workouts into volume based routines. 6 x 4min +  min down, 30 x 1min , some uphill walking and steep uphill hiking workouts for 2 weeks, and two weeks of mixed training with recoveries. Just let it flow for the final two weeks and adjust to niggles and fatigue. 

What most people don't get is that, once you step over race speed, you train yourself to run faster than race speed. So if you check the first strava segment of runnable section of 5km of my race, you can see that people on the front run it at 4:45/km pace with a couple of peak sections of 3:45 to 3:30km & 160m of elevation gain for this 5km. 

No need to do constant 4:20/km tempo runs and 3:10/Km speed sessions. You just risque fatigue and injury. You can just chose a similar sort of terrain and test yourself first, then adjust speed on ups and downs. See what is holding you down.

Cannot hold that 5min  to 5:30 pace on the ups, but can run  3:10 on the downs ? Forcefully, of course it is possible, but when doing that to achieve your goal, is your heart rate recovering ? I mean on the downs it should. Mostly however, when this situations happen, people are not fit enough to push their heart rate up high on the climbs, then descend it down on the descent. Instead, they have a quiet high heart rate on the up, and the same on the descent. 
What you need is some race specific uphill training, then once every second week one quality control style, up and down rolling. 

Just to repeat myself, the moment you are running faster than your race pace, you are training ! That is the most important part of training to understand. The more volume you can do at these faster paces, well, the more you can improve. If you can really dial in these efforts and outwork your competition or in some cases greatly outwork, that is when improvements come. 

The how of this will be discussed in the next article. Quality control ! 

 

The benefit of pro athletes

In 2026, it is still very doable to become a pro trail runner. You need only 3 things. Time to train and recover. Money to support it. Growing knowledge of training, nutrition and lifestyle.

You know trail running races are so varying, that finding your nitch and pairing it up with your genetics are still very much doable. You can become an extremely high level athlete from zero to hero in just a couple of years. Of course, we don't talk about somebody with family and full time job. More likely about somebody who has this goal, works part time or not at all, no family yet. Support from girlfriend and parents or some odd occupation like trading and investments that give you a ton of time. 

Cycling, mountainbiking and strength and conditioning are still not exploited to it's maximum. These are the things that can bring you trail running success on the short race. Of course running will be it on the long one, but we talked about 4 5 years of time.

If you learned to do pilates and other forms of deep reinforcing, relaxing and stretching. You got your nutrition right and can sleep eterneties every single night, you already are good. If you got some swimming going on in sea water summer time and sauna winter time, or maybe even cross country skiing, that is a plus. Why swimming ? After running, it is the cheapest sport. What you need is a pair of googles. I used to do lifeguard training. Most people don't even know about these training methods. Like doing long intervals of: front crawl, over head front crowl, dive 5m deep, 20sec under water swim, side scull, egg beaters, repeat. 

Why do I always talk about cross training ? Especially when you are starting out ? It is simple. To somebody who never ran, I started out just 4 months ago, you prescribe 35hours of training with 20 to 25hours of running, they won't be able to complete one single week. Not even half a week ! However, the only way to catch up lads that are 100times fitter than you, is to outwork them. The only way to outwork is smart work. 

You must put in the time. You can spend time on the foam roller to recover. You can use power breathe to reinforce your diaphragm and do breathing training like o2/co2 tables and do strength routines. Bike, ski and slow walking have no impact either. If you can have a good treadmill and a stationary bike, maybe a rowing machine and a ski erg, those will be your friends too. 30 to 35 hours of training is so easy. There is 168hours in a week. You just need enjoyment, commitment and a good plan. 

Wake up every day, you hop on your indoor bike for 1h with a big bottle of water containing some sugar, some electrolytes. Your podcast and earplugs are ready. This is just to hydrate and refuel the body. Easy riding. Once your blood is flowing, you are down, you do your rolling, mobility, flexbility and activations. Depending on the day, 2hours of training is already in the bank before breakfast. This is so easy and so good for you, that you can do it 7 times a week. If you had immediate access to a pool, you can even do aqua jogging and water exercises. I used to work in a pool, often starting at 6am. I could come in a 4:30 in the morning to do some gentle training and use the sauna afterwards all, before work. 

Then you know, you can nap a little, prepare food for the day and keep up with the paper work. You again do some activations and mobility, special land drills and special activations. 30minutes of jogging at an increasing pace. Do your run session, with 10minutes of cooldown at the end. Arrive to a nice football field and finish off with 20minutes of barefoot walking. As you ease into your routine after months, that will become a barefoot jog. 

In the afternoon, you can go for a bike ride and an evening nordic walk. After dinner, you go on the roller, stretch down and stary calm. Read a good book and go to bed. 

That is it. A 5 to 8hour training day is easy done. Back in the day when there was a 20hour bike strava challenge, I used to do it in a day and a half. Riding 15 hours on day one and next day 5am till 10 am. Done. No impact, loads of food and mobility after wards. Especially for my back. 

Easy. Keep on going. 

Endurance sports related nutritional defficiencies

This is not a medical advice. This is not a doctors advice. This is not even an advice :D It is what I do and have been doing for almost 2 and a half decades. It works, always did and believe that always will, for me. 

I sometimes get low. Sometimes feel very tired for no real reason. The effect of winter, the effect of too long VO2max or high intensity season. The effect of too much volume. What you and most people understand, that we all are extremely different. Our genetics are different. So a the unlimited quantity of combinations of factors, can actually deplete some micro or even macro nutrients in the human bodies. I give you just two examples. Winter time you spend time inside, your wifi is turned on, you do speed sessions and you got a new dog, while your workplace has a new interior paint job. Or that can be simply, summer time, due to more people you got increased traffic, more commute, lower air quality, your kids stay home more, you have degraded drinking water quality, you spend more time on your phone and you got higher power pull in your overhead electric line. These combinations are limitless. It can be 100% nutritional or stress related, emotional or hydration or sports related. It can be posture, breathing, place, moving home, anything. 

If that combination matches your genetic weakness, you can trigger the depletion of something  or on the contrary the over working of some organ. In some cases a 24hour fast will suffice, other cases that will make things worse. In some cases you might experience weight gain or weight loss, for absolute no reason. 

Lifestyle advice

Before talking about supplements, first things first. A little calming breathing sessions twice a day is recommended. It can be box breathing, it can be wim hof, Bouteyko, whatever. You go over what ever you feel, double check. Organs, muscles, digestion, skin. I don't talk about transcendental meditation. Simply 5 minute self observation. Do I have itchy skin, do I have a dental issue, do I have slight sinus pressure, is my left or right nose often blocked, do I have a sudden dodgy knee or ankle, do I digest suddenly some foods badly, am I horny or dull, do I have good or bad thoughts, did I argue with kids and wife more often these days. You know these sort of self check. 

Then you need to keep on doing mobility, because, when health goes down, injuries come. No matter what, mobility, flexibility is crucial daily. Activation too. In case of running, warming up of 20 to 30min and cooldown too ! Do it !

The basics of nutrition should be followed too. No snacking. 3 big meals. Meat, fish and eggs, fruits and veggies. Easy done.

Micros

Here you go micro I target. I am in France, I identified food supplement brands to are not so expensive and have quality ingredients without fillers. Do not get obsesses with ingredients. Avoid some bad ones for sure, but just because these is some microcrystaline cellulose or magnesium stearate in something, it is not bad right away. For sure, if other companies can do it without for that particular supplement, I would surely buy the no filler one. Also keep on double checking the improvements in the health business. We used to use Cyanocobalamin for B12 30 years ago. Then of course switched to Methylcobalamin, then to Hydroxocobalamin and again Methylcobalamin with Adenosylcobalamin. Same for all ! 

What I am looking for when down ? What do I feel, when do I feel it, how do I feel it ? Salon this, I chose.

• Probiotics + Digestive Enzymes
• Extra Protein in the form of whey iso (I take hemp and lin often)
• Creatine (form of mono, Creapure)
• Eaa => pure powder or caps, no fillers, for enhanced mitochondrial function and enzyme secretion  
• Zinc
• Iron
• B12
• D + K2
• 2 to 3g of Vitamin C
• A quality multi 

I don't take anything else really, these are things I target. You might need other stuff, like thyroid support with manganese, selenium, molybdenium and iodine. You might need silicium or other micro. You must understand and observe your body. Try and test and see how you feel. 

People often tell me, no but you cannot do that, it won't work, ni ni ni, na na na. You are right, it is not an over night experiment. I have been doing it for over two decades. If you don't even know that you got iron in your body, than you won't search and understand Schussler Tissue Salts and bitter salt baths. There is a level to anything. Blood test are good. But the interpretation of blood tests is also on you. Doctor will tell you everything is fine. Except we are all individuals. Some levels might be too high for you and others on top of their range, but still low. You can see blood marker ranges of different countries all over the place. There is no standard !!!

Keep it up and observer yourself.  

How would you become a pro trail runner in 2026 ?

STEP 1 => Social Media

I absolutely hate it, personally, that is for sure. I don't even have any apps of that on my phone, no icons on my PC, I have zero notifications and I feel like, that it is very badly used. However, the word media is very much attached to marketing and self marketing is obligatory for an athlete. You must be known and be sellable for a brand. It is not enough to have the legs and a couple of course records anymore, you need to be marketable.

This means, that no matter where you are in your current performance range, you must start social media right now. It must also be qualitative. Posting an image on instagram, "Look where I went today, it was gorgeous" #alps #utmbprep , this sort of thing, is non sense and makes me want to vomit. Posting anything that declines your uniqueness is pushing you away from people, brands and destroying your image. 

First, you want to find your subject that is important for you or the most important besides running, but attached to running. Of course, if you were an explorer or an Alpinist, you could do quotes from past and do a 3 phrase reflection on it. If you were a health geak or a physio you can go down on that line too. If you work in IT and computers and programming is your thing or architecture, well to draw it around running is extremely difficult, but you might be on the path of creating something absolutely unique. 

Platforms are a choice. I find that Strava is not yet maximally exploited and there are possibilities beyond posting runs. You can go classique with facebook, youtube and instgram of course. That could always work. But a combination of Strava, own website, a blogging platform for runners, well chosen is maybe more unique. 
Product reviews are a nono, because maybe you'll talk about a brand that shoes fell apart on the first run, you are angry and degrade it, but their new line of shoes 4 years later is the best in the market. If your bad review is still up on youtube with 150 thousand views, well, that is not going to help to get a sponsorship. Also if you start being overly positive about the growth of another brand and start using exclusively their products, like dressing up in Salomon, other brands won't like that. This also means, that use colorful clothing, but avoid giant logos and marketing for free.

If you went videos, like daily motion and youtube, use clothing that is made by you. It is cheap, talks and makes you unique. For 100€ you can get 10 different t-shirts with your own created logo and own images on them. 

Anyway, find a unique subject that you can mix together with running. Do it on the platform of your choice. Do not abuse it, do not spend time on it, do not engage really, but give some feedback for comments time to time. Make around 2 posts a week. Maybe Tuesday and Saturday. This way, you might take 3 years to get to be paid as a runner, but this way you might have 300 posts already. Long format articles , you can work on them to make them quality and get out one or 2 a month. 

STEP 2 => Choose your qualities 

You must of course know what you want and focus on it. If you don't have track and field or marathon background, running road ultras might be a bad idea. The Comrades Female record is 5:44 for 87kilometers what is 3:57/km pace. Female ! 
If you think you can stroll slow but steady very long, maybe the new wave of 200 to 250 milers are for you. If you like giant over night doubles in big mountains, things like hard rock, Montagnehard, Trail des Ecrins or the Trail de 4 massifs would be your choice. 
You got vertical speed, and strong tendons and joints ? Real medium distance sky running of 15 to 25km could be an option. You got more likely push off speed and downhill speed ? Golden trail style racing can be something to think about. Actually while it should not be a goal initially, as it could be disappointing, Golden Trail series are very very well thought out. I am not sure how the ranking system works in general, but if you were in Europe, travelling is quite accessible. So if you can rank in top 30, you got free entries. If you got ranked in top 20, you got travel and accommodation aid for some races.  If you got top 10, well, no salary, but a lot of help and publicity ! This year, there are 10 races in Europe. Depending on where you live, you can target Austria, Poland and Slovakia, or Italy, France and Spain. Though the French race is a BS fitness test. No mountains, just fast running with quite lot of road. Not sure why they chose Eco Trail de Paris.

It is very important, that you target races in order to win and place well. So do not do road marathons finishing 50th or 100th, because your friends do it, if you want to be a trail pro. 

Chose and chose well. Work on your forte and weaknesses too. 

STEP 3 => Training

Endurance comes from life and constant training, nutrition and mental attitude. Not only from big outings. Train endurance, but never focus on it ! 

Everything is won by speed. Speed ! Speed ! Work and focus on speed. That leads to posology and quality of foot stride. Joint and tendon strenght. Breathing and posture. 

You must train that speed all the time. Increase it and build upon it. You are obliged. You can train for an ultra where you walk 75% of the distance, well we talk about walking speed. You can work on your VK and longer vertical races. Your speed on steep terrain might be your goal. Vo2max and speed endurance. Either ways, speed is the component that make you win. It must be worked freckin every single day. Working towards it and working on it. Sometimes 2 hours of mobility, foam rolling and skipping roping, other times sprinting or 4 x 4s. 

Learn about periodization. Learn about planning. Do not get carried away by non important stuff. You might enjoy rucking and bike packing. But don't forget your goal is 25km D+1500m of fast running !!! Make an off season of 2 to 3 months to build power, strength endurance with your heavy pack adventures, but when the pre build starts, put those down and limit their use. Specificity is your key. 

Never skimp on nutrition hydration and sleep. 

Do not make a 3 month plan, but a 5 year one. If at the end of your 5th year, you are still not pro, sponsored or get paid, it means that you did not listen. Cause if you had 600 quality posts on 3 different social media platforms, you win races and set course records, you are respected by the community, kind, smart and marketable, you can be bought and sponsored, paid and pushed. 

The Importance of Sugar - High Carb Athletisme

I just have listened to the podcast : The real science of sport podcast from Ross Tucker and Mike Finch. 

Of course, the subject was the Sub 2 marathon. They always talk about shoes, shoes and shoes, but if I pulled the info well, they accord maximum 0.5% to nutrition and sports nutrition. 0.5% of performance increase from the high carb intake. 

I really believe that it is much more. Maybe we can say, 0.5% performance increase on the day itself, but solid 5% increase in case of training. And, and, and maybe an overall 10 to 15% increase in general fitness. Like training for the marathon, but not loosing high end speed. 
Because as they state in the podcast, you cannot think to have a V12 engine and make it consume 5litres of gas an hour. They believe still that VO2max is contradictory to economy. You just cannot get efficient and fast in case of long distance endurance, if you got high VO2max. 

Except that now, with the ideas and science behind fuelling has changed so drastically, the what we gotto imagine is more likely a powerful Turbocharged V6 engine, with a little and light 20L fuel tank, that is topped up each 20 minutes on the go ! 

Also the thing is that the same thing is done during training. There is way less chance of getting injured, when your muscles are fuelled. There is way less chance of getting hormonal and nutritional issues, when, you are always powered up. Guess what, that equals to less muscle damage after each workout and on the long haul too. Meaning, you need less protein to recover. What ? Sugar replaces protein ? Actually yes ! What a stupid idea ? Well, simply put, using the car analogy, if you ran with your tank topped up, you won't blow your engine. 
But guess what again, to absorb and take in that much of sugar, like 115 to 150g an hour, you need water and if you went long enough, you need electrolytes too. Just like your car, need cooling liquids and oil too. So if you got your fuel going on, you got your cooling liquid and oil always fresh, tyres pumped up to correct pressure and miles checked on them, you don't need to go as often to your garage, what represents the protein ! 

Also, in a previous episode but also in another podcast of SWAP, they mentioned studies that one of the coolest effects of this high carb intake, is not only muscular and energetic, but mental. Motivation. Drive. Determination. I can just brutally account to that. The only time, when you should quit your workout, if it has a neuromuscular goal and you cannot complete it. You can turn a VO2max workout into a threshold session. You can turn a long run into a short run and do 10 x 10sec uphill sprinting and get back later. However, if you want to run sub  2 for 800m as a master, the moment your 200s go over 28sec and you cannot come back under, what you do is worsening the result of the actual workout and imprinting bad habits. 
Derailed a bit. What I am saying, that when you just feel down and tired and don't want to finish a workout. Take a gel or even 2. When you don't want to finish your long run, take a gel or two, take some salt and water. When your workout splits are dropping and still have an hour to go, take a gel or two and use energy drinks. 

Guess what. When your workouts are fuelled properly like this, even as an amateur athlete, your life is better. Post hard run days or nights are not smoked anymore. 

Is it good for you ? Are there health consequences of all that sugar ? Can there be some issues down the line ? How to fuel like a pro to get the benefit ? 

There are tons of people talking about diabetes and insulin, etc etc. Well, there is nothing to worry about. 
First of all, fuelling is not about chugging down carbs. It is fuelling strategically, to support an effort. Running in Zone 1 or low Zone 2 for 3hours and you try to take in 145g of carbs an hour, you might run into issues, yes. Your insulin production is already lot lower than normal, but still there is, but your GLUT transporter activation is not yet at peak either. You are in a weird MAF style fat burning zone. Those are efficiency runs and can be beneficial either by microdosing sugar of 15 to 40g an hour or just not taking in anything. I mean, a 35min 35 yo 10k runner, jog around @ 115bpm heart rate, he can be there for 3 hours with only water and salt. 

On the other hand, when there is power in need, sugar is your friend indeed. So when he cranks up his intensity to 145 to 190 heart rate, in case of intervals, long runs, threshold sessions and long runs, this is when you can train your system, but also your system can train you too ! Back in the day, people were preaching salted potatoes, orange slices and some clif bars on an ultra running race course, while cruising around 115 to 125average heart rate with some probable peaks to 135 to 145. It was believed that if you peaked your HR too high too often you either won't finish or blow up and add 5 to 10hours to your suffer time. They were also training like that. Go out empty stomach in the morning. Not to take anything to any runs. Keep it steady, make that motor go efficient by the trial of miles. Increase speed at the low heart rates. 

In 2026 ? Low heart rate ? Nahhh. Keep that heart pumping, your muscles need blood, lymph, water, sugar, amino acids and more. How to keep it pumping ? Fuel it ! Keep the sugar going on ! 

Well, sports nutritional products are not yet so great. They are not bad, but they are not organic broccoli either. In that regard I cannot tell you, that they are healthy or not, to take 10 to 15 gels a week, for your runs.  The only thing that is for sure important, that you can measure what you take in extremely easily. You can dial in your nutrition of pre packaged sports nutritional products. 

I can take 2 gels for a 90min training session, with a Maurten 180, during activation in the beginning. That comes back to 135g of sugar total for a 20 x 1minute workout. 

If I wanted to do that with natural products. I could use organic Maltodextrine, with Agave syrup.  Around 50g of Agave and 35g of Malto. All organic. Use some natural flaworing like grape juice or so. The thing is, that all of that needs mixing, measing nad adjustments to start with and that is only the drink. 
First of all, that is going to be so sweet, that you won't be able to jug it down. Not happening. I would rather use like 35g of Malto with 10g of Agave, 1dl of grape juice and 500ml of water with a pinch of salt. Tried, tested, it works as a preworkout preload. On the other hand, on a hot day, you don't want that in your bottle. It will ferment an rott, stain and stink your bottle.  
A 5kg bucket of all organic malto is 35 euros and all organic malto from manioca is 49€ for 5kg. 350g of Agave organic is 1.39€. 

Then there is the on the run. Instead of gels I could use one 250ml bottle filled up with special liquid. Mapple syrup has around 50 50 ratio, what is good. Maybe if you went over 100g an hour, that 20% difference might cause an issue, but I race a lot with mapple syrup and for under 2hour races, it works just fine. 

250g/190ml is 650kcals => 162.5 grams of sugar. So one bottle would fuel me for around 2 hours.  
The cheapest I have found was around 2.99€ for 250g, but regulary @ 4€ more likely for the non organic or buying in bulk 19€ for the litre what is 1.32kg. 

If I used my equation right, that would set me back to 1€ for 45g of sugar, that I have control right and dose right !

Right now I bought some experimental gels from a brand I highly rate for 2 years now. It also sets me back to 1euro per gel or the normal ones for 19.99 for 16 x 45g of carb gels. 

So, actually money wise, it is kif kif. Except that with my gels I never ever ever ever ran into any issues. In mapple syrup, yes I did get low and did get fatigue favor. 
In case of the Sis Beta, what is the gold standard still, I blow my mind it with it. It happened 5 times. At first I thought of some infection or something from mountain water. Full body pain, especially chest and gut. Not particualrly anywhere. With microfever. Then again and again and again. I bought one batch from a shop, then also had some ordered online. Same ! It smokes me. Not sure what it does, but sis beta is a nono. I also used it as a last resort during a race as the final caffein boost. It contains 200mg of caff. It gave a so deep hypo, that I lost 1h in the final 10k, like from 10th place I dropped midpack. Dead. Sis is not for me. 

Anyways. Hope these ideas helped, but let's do a final check up:

• You must practice loading your stomach with the products, water and salt
• You must use high heart rates like Z2 high Z3 and 24, if not there is no demand for the sugar !
• Start slow @ 60, work it up. It takes little time. In a month and the half you can be at 115 an hour.
• Use gels that are tested by athlets. Sis, PF, Nduranz, 226, Maurten....etc
• You need to keep practicing it with fluid and with salt 

 

Tracking everything - Trail runners need it ?

What if you could measure everything you do, train, live, eat, sleep, without disturbance and apply it to your training ? Does it compare to mindfulness, chill, relax and self observation ? Let's dive into some ideas.

Like always I like to come from the animal study. We humans are animals and we don't need anything to recognize changes in our physiology and biology. 
Except the we are not humans anymore but droids. It"s been like that for a very very long time. First we used, wore and ate things done by others. Then it changed and done by wooden machinery. Then after the industrial revolution it became non human powered machinery and we started even using those machines to transport and move us. Than to enhance, save, help us too. Information tech, like I am writing here, has also been a major change. 

While naturalistic thoughts are great, we are absolutely not natural, ever.  What we do in training and recovery and sports nutrition are also absolutely not natural ! Animals don't do that. They perform, but not prepare to perform. They perform and not plan, eat, sleep, train to perform. 

Wearing a device like whoop, Garmin Cirqua, Polar Loop or Fitbit Air can be a major contributor towards our health, towards our performance. 

I think the question is, what sort of humans are we. Somebody who can get obsessed and addicted with ton of nerves and weak mind towards non human things ? These are the people who should not actually really use phones, apps, gadgets. One nights bad sleep score, despite that they feel good and that bad night did not impact their health in the line of 30 good nights, can go down on a rabbit hole, impacting further nights. A bad nutritional reaction impacting a daily recovery score could lead to bad choices, starvation, over eating, binging and purging. Too much screen time, always watching for health stats and more. 

There are other sort of humans, who put on a wristband, measure their weight, look at their sleep time and totally forget about and go ahead with their life and training. Those runners are better suited to analytics. They draw long term conclusions. Have long term visions. One look at a data point chart, can lead to minor regular adjustments and quality habit building. So while they would be wearing a device like for 24/7, their actual time visualizing data is under 5min for the week, but their decisions and actions from that 5min learning is life altering. 

Performance Devices

Heart rate as first, but blood oxygen and lactate meters, VO2max tests, blood tests and more. Those are actually way more useful, way more beneficial and way more expensive and intrusive, than a little fitbit. 

Why ? They can give either immediate or gradual feedback on what is going on in the athletes system right at the moment and over time. We talk about training of course.
You can dial in your effort to the second, where you produce just enough lactate to stimulate your speed and endurance, but not too much that you push over. You can self observe, so you can keep a very very high specificity without the cost of recovery. I mean if we will have one day a non intrusive, precise lactate monitor at an affordable price, 2:10 to 2:30 marathons will become the norm for regular humans. 
We talk about Marius Bakken style approach. In big lines and in a very simplified way: if you trained at 4mmol/l plus lactate levels, your speed would be for instance 3:20/km pace. You do a lot of workouts like that and even faster. Your total training volume at those speeds are 25km a week, while preparing for your 10km. Your actual 10km time is 36:00. So you train actually way too hard and not enough. Nearly all of your real training is under or well under 3:20 and your best race pace is at 3:36/km. Adjusting just a little your regular training paces, your lactate production can significantly drop to like 2.6 to 3mmol, but you loose only like 5 to 10 seconds a kilometer. On the other hand in many cases you can 2 or 3 fold your total volume at speeds, because your recovery on the other hand is 10 fold faster ! Your protein needs are lower and also due to lower general training heart rates, your intra workout energy intake is easier and more likely possible. If you adjust your recovery times and keep a high variety, you can easily do magic. 
I never really followed this approach, because I trained with friends. However I once trained with the Maffetone method exclusively for 6 months, with zero derailment. My best training pace was like 3:55/km, that I could hold for 16km without dipping over 140bpm heart rate. I ran a 1:14:55 half marathon from it. Of course I ran a lot of intervals like 30 x 1km @ like 4:05 or doing big uphill workouts too. I lied actually, I ran a couple of workouts downhill on a 3to4% slope @ a quiet low heart rate. Like 5 x 1000m @ like 2:55/km pace, in very cushioned shoes. However we talk about 3 workouts in 6months. 

I actually ordered a pair of carbon road shoes, as I am interested in running a sub 35min 10km to see where I stand in smart training and age/fitness and possibilities.

I am getting older and not really interested in challenges like that, but somehow I get a peps in thinking of doing it. My training will surely consist a lot of volume at low distances with short recoveries. Like 40 x 200 @ 3:25 to 3:28/km pace with like 30 to 40seconds recoveries. Or 4 x 10 x 800 @ like 3:28/km.

I used to be running 10 x 500s @ 1:27. No reason outside of feeling great running fast. I could barely walk after these sessions. If I could have run 3 x 1500 @ 3:45/km right after, like a Jack Daniel's style flush session, then yes. But no, I was thrashed. 

I derailed again a little. Performance devices are great, but often reserved to elites having people around them, having time to do a lot of stuff outside of running and having time to sleep. 

I m thinking of getting the new Fitbit Air for a year or two, to see if I can see health changes. I get cold sores during winter, so it might give me some insight on my health status during months of cold. It might also help dialling in recovery. You simply adding in 12more hours is very little, but could be very altering. After a track session instead of doing a Saturday long run in the morning, that could be done in the evening and that would change a whole lot ! 

Training for your athlete type

That is extremely important, especially for high mileage athletes, but also for heavier high impact athletes. High impact, I mean those that train downhill too, or do serious amounts of elevation gain too. Look at Killian with his 55kg frame and look at me with often 90kg frame. That is 35kg of a difference. If we bombed down a D-2000m hill at the same speed, well first of all I would be probably be very proud, but most importantly either very sore right away, or if managed it, would be needing much much more recovery. 

This is our number one issue to think about. Impact, damage and micro-tears done not only on muscles, but tendons, ligaments, bones, joint structures. So, for a heavier runner, bigger runner, counting training by mileage is a bad idea. High training hours is always crucial, because fitness is key to winning or getting better, but it should be not done exclusively by covering distance. Strengthening the human is key. 

Mindful Running 

Mindful running !!! Running educative drills, practising foot placement on the descents, learning how to climb and so. I mean people get untrained and their mind muscle connection are disturbed. You tell a man or a woman, flex your arm, then contract your biceps, they don't know what to do. Even to a fast runner, you tell them to get into position where your calves are the most contracted, they cannot. This is what I say, when talk about mindful running. Not like yoga meditation retreat be in the present illusionistic something. Do you know that when you climb, what muscles are you using. If you were hands on knees, back bent, how can you change spine curvature to breathe better or to activate maybe your glutes more to discharge your quads and spare your hams. Can you place your foot on a way that it unloads the calves or can you understand what sort of calf charging is acceptable in what situations, so that no cramps can occure from over use. Feeling and knowing those muscles are crucial. Can you see yourself when going hard ? Do you really breathe from the belly ? Do you still breathe at least a couple of percentages through your nose, in order to calm you ? 

Cross training

For a bigger built trail runner, if he wanted to get better, cross training is going to be obligatory. Well strength and conditionning already is, but for every body. However, while your prep mileage can be still very high even in the mountains and I mean very very high, your yearly training mileage, due to that aforementioned impact should be way lower. If not, fatigue and injury will lower it for the next year !

Cardiovascular cross training is of course can be very beneficial, like elliptical trainer, flat cycling, wind bike, swimming and rowing, etc etc, but it won't transfer really skills and muscle use to trail running. Mountain biking, road cycling in mountains, cross country skiing and ski mo, real swimming like practicing all 4 strokes equally and some life saving drills like side stroke, egg beater kick, under water carries and more are all better options. Even a good spin on an e mountain bike or en e off road scooter is fantastic. Reading the terrain at higher speeds will help you neuromuscularly a lot ! 

Of course, most importantly you can keep high training hours through out the year. That is a cool compromise.

NUTRITION

An athlete needs more of the good stuff. A heavier athlete would need even more. He or she has more bones, more tendons, more organs, more blood. Forcefully he'll need more liquids, more salt, more legumes and meat, more creatine, more supplements. A 47kg female might get away well with 20g of high quality protein post run, while a 90kg runner might need 60 ! But that runner doesn't want to go anabolic either to gain even more weight, so probably a mixture of plant based and whey with extra EAAs would be a better choice. While winter time an athlete might be a non sweater, summer time some sessions might require up to 1g of salt an hour. Same true to luquids. We have bigger surface, so sweat more, bigger mouth and lungs, we expell more. Of course we need to take in more water, during the day too. Important !!!

Look at the recent marathon world record. Apparently he took in 115g an hour in general of carbs. If at those speeds that is possible for such a light athlete, there is absolute no excuse for a bigger one at lower heart rates to keep on going and training the gut towards even higher carb intakes. It might be more distributed for a 2 hours balls to the walls trail run. Like starting the carb journey with the warming up. I really need personally long warming ups. I am a diesel. A 20min jog is not goign to cut it. I like to walk for 15 mintues, maybe up on a hill. I like to do some hopping, skipping and knee raises, educatives during this. I stop do some leg swings too. I then slowly jog and do some uphill hiking, run down and do some 4 min dynamic sets. I need around 45min. I also start taking in for instance 40g of carbs with 6dl of water 1 hour before the run. That gets integrated during the warming up. I also take a 45g gel 20min before the start, and I keep on jogging and moving around. All the wiggling and moving also makes my bowels move, my kidneys work, so anything that rest gets out. I get to the starting line light and clean with nothing to digest or eliminate. 

That is already 85g, before the race. Then I take 2 x 45g for each hour and have a 20g magnesium gel and a 25g maurten gel too, what is often for backup, but I tend to use it. We talk about 310g total. Well for a 2 hours race that is 155g an hour, but it is distributed for 3hours. I need very high blood sugar levels for the start, because it always goes out fast and if you don't do so, you fall off the wagon. Also, if your sugar levels drop 25min into the race, that is also a big mistake ! 

 

Training Volume - Regulated, gradual, smart

 Training Volume is extremely important. There are certain factors that are crucial to to observe, respect and play around with:

• Regularity of volume
• Sport Proportion in Volume
• Volume in time
• Volume of stress like kilometers and elevation gain and loss
• Weekly / Monthly / Yearly Volume

Changing the regularity in volume is often a key to injury. It can be general volume or the volume of one sport or the mixture of both. Example:  A runner injures his leg, he has time on hand. Now he starts cycling double the time of his total actual training. That is a great way, to in addition to the running injury, develop like knee and lower back pain. Of course, we can double or even triple or quadruple our training hours, but must be done gradually and very smartly. 

Dropping under certain amount of hours is also very bad for regular runners. You know if you ran 60km in 6hours with 2hours of strength and conditioning regularly, that is 8hours, that is barely enough stimulation for a generally sedentary human to stay in shape. If you dropped down to 2 hours or nothing, well your training is gone. In case of a high volume, well performing athlete, it is slightly different. It might promote sudden recovery, sped up healing and brutal fitness gains. But ! But the thing is when a 25hour week athlete drops to 5hour for a week or two, he should not do that on a couch potato style. That is also a very bad habit. Of course, the last 3 days before a marathon you don't want to be wood chopping for 7 hours daily. However, you don't want to glue down your muscles and have sticky non elastic, semi calcified tendons either. Balance !

Your volume in time is important. As I said, training time to time is as bad as training too much. I can see runners doing 2 runs a week. What a crappy habit. I can see runners doing that preparing for a marathon. A 10km run Tuesday and a 20km long run on the weekend. It is better not to run. Your body has no time to build resistance. It has no stress to strengthen bones, tendons, cardio vascular system, to build endurance and to train the regulation of sugar burning and fat burning. To understand endurance and speed. Your body is confused. If you don't like to run, than do another sport. Do not do something because somebody told you to, for a challenge or fashion, jealousy or lack of knowledge. Do something that gets you out of bad. Everybody needs movement. Everybody needs sport. Every body needs daily exercise. Find one ! The one where you invest time to learn technique, to learn biomechanics, anatomy, physiology. To read books about it, blogpost. Write a journey and  journal. Write a blog, make videos. That is the sport you want. See what motivates you. Body transformation ? Human capacity ? Competition or challenge ? Strength and power or speed and endurance ?

Also do not get sucked into anything that is about aesthetics and narcisitc, equipment obliged BS. Like body building, cross fit, hyrox, ninja warrior and stuff like that. First of all, unlike 20 or 30 years ago, when I used pay 5.99€ for a high quality monthly Gym membership, with sauna, steamroom and unlimited jacuzzi time included, now it is bloody expensive. Also, often these young fellas can do absolutely nothing without a barbell, rowing machine or elliptical trainer. You are also just locked into a mindset, that you need a gym or actually need something to train regularly. No you don't need anything to start out. You can do callisthenics, power pilates, body weight stuff, walking, running, jogging, uphill walking. You can always find ways to use your actual environment for free. Do like the gym ? I absolutely highly rate it and love it. I have a Bsc in strenght and co and I highly rate everything I learnt in the last 30 years and still do learn. Do I go to a gym ? No ! Would I go if I lived just besides ? Probably !

I got carried away a little sorry. So You must also respect your running and other sports volume. If you ran 5 hours and cycled 10, that is 15 hours of training. You cannot just turn it around overnight. And you cannot just suddenly run more and augment your totals to 20hours. Needs time, thinking and preparation. 

Then there is your periodic volume. We talked about weekly, but there is monthly and yearly volume too. People often and very fast forget what happened. For instance, if somebody injured himself 2 times in a year, with 2 to 4 weeks time, it can be very much related to volume. Year one 300hours of training, Year two 750 hours of training, Year 3 injured. Simple ! Of course, the injury can come already in the beginning of year 2. 

Tendons, muscles, heart and lungs get trained brutally fast. Bones, joints, cartilage, meniscus and brain needs years and decades. The joint structures and major tendons too. The actual backbone, pelvis, tibia and more. They need graduality.

So while your yearly volume might be always 600hours, this should be 50 hours a month and not like 150, 5, 50, 80, 10 and so....Keep in simple and regulated.