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 !
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