Dec 2024 / Jan 2025

Lessons from Aid Stations

Jason Koop
Dec 2024

My morning coaching routine starts bright and early by checking a monitoring app called HRV4Training. It’s a daily protocol I use for the elite athletes I work with that gives me an indication of their readiness for the day’s workout. The app measures morning Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and then collects a host of subjective data on sleep, recovery, soreness and travel. While the data collection routine only costs the athlete a couple of minutes in the morning to take an HRV measurement and log the subjective variables, the outcome is quite powerful in terms of helping me direct their training. The monitoring system also adds a layer of confidence to the prescription that both the athlete and I can take to the bank. I have a better sense for when the athlete can push, when to back off and when to stay the course.

 

As much as I like this monitoring system for all of its sophistication and the insight it provides into an athlete’s present-day physiology, I don’t apply it universally to all athletes for many reasons. Some athletes don’t like the time cost. Others can’t commit to the consistency needed for the morning measurement. And finally, implementation is logistically problematic as sometimes there are mere minutes between the measurement and the action that needs to be taken (and with a difference in time zones, sometimes I can’t be available to interpret the results). At the end of the day, after all of the data has been digested and analyzed, I find that the monitoring program forces a singular change in training only every 6-8 weeks. For this reason alone, I am constantly evaluating the return on investment for the time and energy cost.

I could have used countless examples of ways sophisticated science can inform training decisions to help set up this article. There are any number of research studies, wearable devices and algorithms that athletes use to help direct their training, and I bet I’ve used the vast majority (if not all) of them at some point during my coaching career. But despite all the progress in this area, more times than not, I am leveraging a more rudimentary set of information that I have curated over the course of my coaching career. One that’s gleaned not from a proprietary machine learning algorithms or a miniature device, but information garnered from using my eyes and ears observing athletes at aid stations. Above all else, witnessing what happens with athletes when they are deep into an ultra – what they say, what they do, how they do it, what ails them and how they decide to move forward – drives more of my decisions as a coach than any other singular aspect. So, let’s look at what we can learn from this old school observation.

What You Hear at Aid Stations

The Leadville Trail 100 is infamous for its consistent 50% finish rate, and most of the DNFs occur at the Outward Bound aid station at mile 76. I’ve spent the better part of 15 years at this aid station, staying from when the leaders arrive through the final cutoff, and have likely seen over 500 athletes drop at this particular spot. While there are many, many people that drop out at that aid station, ironically there are only a few ailments that are commonly cited:

  • “I can’t eat.”
  • “My feet are torn to shreds.”
  • “I’ve lost my will.”
  • “My quads are blown.”

Go to any other 100-mile ultramarathon and you will hear a similar set of calamities from runners in the final aid stations. But if you don’t want to take my word for it, take the word of former Western States Medical Director, Marty Hoffman. He performed research via a post-run survey on this exact topic. He asked finishers and non-finishers in both Western States and Rio Del Lago about what problems affected their race performances. Two critical tables from that research (1) are presented below. The list is obvious at first yet offers a powerful lens into what actually affects runners and what we should really be focused on in training.

 

 

Now, we don’t always need to focus on the ailments. The opposite sentiment is also useful context. Ask runners who are doing well, and they will tell you the following:

  • “I’m glad I did my long runs.”
  • “All of the descending I did paid off.”
  • “My nutrition plan is working great.”

It’s through these lenses that we can identify the things that matter more. You hear the same themes from different sides of the coin – both those who are struggling and those having great days.

What You Don’t Hear

We can also draw on what we rarely hear at aid stations. As a coach, evaluating runners from this angle tells me what things are less important in the overall scheme of training. I challenge anyone to point me to a person who has made any of the following statements late in an ultramarathon:

  • “I’m glad I did my speedwork.”
  • “My fasted runs paid off.”
  • “I should have spent more time on the track.”
  • “I’m glad I did so much work on my running form.”

In my nearly 25-year coaching career, I have never heard any rendition of any of these statements made at an aid station. I’ll bet that if you surveyed aid station captains across the country, they would tell you a similar story. Now I want to be perfectly clear before the Tuesday Night Track Clubs, fasted training groups and form gurus throw a tantrum: some of the elements mentioned above have merit. There is a perfectly plausible reason why one might want to work on their form or do speedwork on a track. My point with the exercise is what you don’t hear illuminates what is less important in training – not unimportant, simply less important.

Takeaways

Ultramarathons are contested under high amounts of duress. Because of this, simple observation of athletes will point you to what matters more and what matters less in training. Athletes will tell you what they need, we just need to listen and then design training that will affect those points. After digesting all of these observations, it’s clear that what matters the most to athletes are volume, long runs, adequate descending, a nutrition plan that’s been put into practice and appropriate acclimatization to the environment. These should be the focus of your training plan, and it really does not need to be any more complicated than that. Don’t major in the minors by putting a disproportionate amount of work into things that matter less. Listen to what the athletes are telling us and do what matters more. 

References

Hoffman, M. D., & Fogard, K. (2011). Factors related to successful completion of a 161-km ultramarathon. International journal of sports physiology and performance6(1), 25–37. https://doi.org/10.1123/ijspp.6.1.25

www.hrv4training.com

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