Any eagle-eyed viewers of Tom Evans‘ recent ‘No Stone Left Unturned’ video in the build up to UTMB will have noticed him taking in some serious elevation with a weighted vest.
The Brit was third in trail running’s biggest event in 2022 behind a record-breaking Kilian Jornet and then the following year he went on to win the most prized event in the United States – Western States.
But things have unravelled at UTMB in the last two seasons, meaning he has unfinished business when he returns to Chamonix for this year’s edition.
Different approach
Heading into this week he’s one of the favourites – as is Kiwi Ruth Croft for the women’s title.
And one thing they both have in common is a coach and training method called ‘muscular endurance training’.
Famed Alpine coach Scott Johnston has helped both of them and it will be fascinating to see whether his approach helps these two ultrarunning stars take top spot on the podium after 174km and the equivalent (and a bit more) of climbing Mt Everest.
Pioneered by Russian Yuri Verkhoshansky in the latter half of the twentieth century, studies show that an athlete’s endurance limit is set not only by their aerobic capacity, but also by their muscular endurance – the ability to exert muscular repetition for propulsion.
Dream double?
Increasing an athlete’s muscular endurance, in turn, improves their fatigue resistance, which Johnston believes is vital to an endurance athlete’s success.
“Local muscular fatigue is the single biggest determinant of performance in any endurance sport. This is especially true in ultra-long events,” he says.
“If the athlete can’t resist fatigue in the propelling muscles, then having a high VO2 max is of no consequence. So, improving fatigue resistance in the athlete is the main focus of the event-specific workouts, which all fall under the umbrella of what we call local muscular endurance training.”
Johnston has prescribed Tom and Ruth’s UTMB training in TrainingPeaks, an app that enables coaches and athletes to plan, track, and analyse their training. Every week or two, Johnston would schedule workouts to their TrainingPeaks calendars based on their individual progress.
You can read much more about the detail around that here but it will be interesting to see how the pair fare in Chamonix this week.
And Tom’s video, embedded below, underlines – as his friends try and join him on the session – just how challenging the training really is.
