Running Plan Review Run Like a Pro Ultramarathon Level 3

Does it build you up smartly?

Not really. The plan has nearly every kind of training an ultra runner needs, but the hard days lack a sequence, and the sessions arrive with no word on what they're for.

Strong plans usually give each stretch of weeks its own job. Early weeks lay the base, and later weeks change the kind of hard work as the race gets closer. Plans built that way tend to beat plans that hold one kind of load from start to finish. Here, the long run and the weekly hours grow, but the hard days never change their emphasis. New kinds of session join in weeks 4, 7 and 10, yet nothing shifts the weight toward one kind of work as the race nears. Hill repeats, fartleks, progression runs and repeats at 30-minute effort turn up in the first weeks and are still turning up in the last ones. Everything around the hard days grows, while the balance among them stays where it started. If you want them to change from block to block, you have to plan that yourself.

The sessions also arrive bare. Each one is written in the book's shorthand, with the structure and nothing about what it's for. The book's overview chapter does explain every run type, and explains it well. But on any given Tuesday, you're reading the session in one place and its purpose in another.

Does it protect you from injury?

Mostly, for a runner already used to this much running. But the plan has two gaps, and they matter most for a runner with a recent injury.

The first is where the new hard sessions arrive. After each lighter week, the running jumps back up. That's normal. But three times, the jump also brings a kind of hard session you haven't done before: the first repeats at 30-minute effort in week 4, the first long steady run in week 7, and the first tempo run in week 10, the same week the long run goes from 2 hours to three and a half. Sudden jumps in running load tend to raise injury risk, and weekly mileage on its own misses the stress that harder running adds. So these weeks ask more of your legs than their totals suggest.

The second is strength. The book talks about it in general terms but gives no program, and the calendar has no slot marked for it. With 9 runs a week already on the page, finding room for it and deciding what goes in it is your job. Strength training lowers the risk of sport injuries substantially, more than stretching or balance work does, so this gap costs more than it looks.

Rest is thin as well. Outside the lighter weeks, there's no day without a run, and the schedule doesn't say what a recovery day should look like. The book covers recovery in a chapter of its own, but the calendar leaves it there.

Plenty here protects you. Every third week is lighter, with one fewer run and Monday off. Training that piles up without a break tends to raise the risk of injury and illness, and a plan you follow on your own needs that relief built in. Every hard session opens with easy running, and most add drills and strides, so you never start one cold. Two hard sessions never fall on back-to-back days. And the book gives a clear rule for illness: a head cold is fine for an easy run, but anything below the neck means rest.

What happens when you miss a day?

Somewhere in 19 weeks, a cold will cost you a few runs, or a second run of the day won't fit. When that happens, the schedule leaves the next decision to you.

It doesn't say which runs matter most in a short week. All 9 sit on the page as equals, so it's up to you to see that the long run and the hard sessions are the ones to protect, and that an easy run can go. Nothing on the schedule says what to do after a missed run or a missed week. And each hard session gives only the book's effort codes, with no plain description of how it should feel, so you check the book before you head out.

The book fills in some of this. It has a chapter on adapting when life gets in the way, and a simple rule: after more than three days off, drop back a week. The efforts themselves are well chosen, and anchoring them to the body's own turning points, as the book does, is sound practice. The entry bar is clear too, so you know before week 1 whether this level is yours.

The book also gives you more room than the schedule suggests. Any easy run can become cross-training. The two extra short runs each week can go on whichever days suit you. The 5-hour long run can mix running with hiking. A runner who knows the book well can bend this plan a long way. A runner working from the schedule alone will find it rigid.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Yes. This is where the plan is strongest.

An ultra is decided in the late hours, when your legs are tired and the miles keep coming. The plan trains for that directly. The long run grows from under 2 hours to 5 hours in week 16. In marathon training, runners whose long runs go longer tend to finish faster, though no study has tested whether shorter, harder sessions could stand in for them, and an ultra only raises the stakes. In weeks 11, 14 and 17, a long Saturday comes before a long Sunday, so you learn what running on yesterday's legs feels like. The last of those weekends is Rosario's own favorite ultra workout, named on the schedule: three and a half hours on Saturday, three on Sunday. For runners who are already fit, extra running probably does more to help the legs hold up late than to build aerobic fitness, though the direct evidence is thin. Holding up late is exactly what those weekends practice.

The rest of the week keeps some speed in the mix. Hard running shows up in every one of the 19 weeks, and the relaxed 10K time trial in week 8 tells you how the work is landing.

After the biggest weekend, the plan eases off for 2 weeks, and a taper like that improves race performance compared with not tapering. Race week drops to about 5 hours of running. It still holds 2 short hard sessions, on Tuesday and Thursday, brief enough to keep the week light and quick enough to remind your legs they can move.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Easy running is the base everything else stands on, and the hard days work best when they're clearly hard. Trained runners who keep easy days easy and hard days hard tend to improve more than runners who settle into a steady middle effort.

This plan keeps that line clear. About 90 percent of the running is easy, and the hard days rarely look alike from one week to the next. One Friday you drive up a hill for 30 seconds at a time. A few weeks later it's 2 minutes. Some Tuesdays ask you to hold one even effort for 45 minutes or more. And in week 11, an accelerations run has you build from a jog to a full sprint over 11 minutes, then 6, then 3.

Drills, strides and plyometrics come once a week, usually on Thursday, from week 1 to week 18, and strides open most hard sessions too. Short, explosive work like the plyometrics and hill sprints can make runners a little more efficient, though results are mixed and strides themselves haven't been tested that way. In a race that lasts hours, that kind of saving seems well worth having.