Adventure Race Training Plan

Posted by Grant on 4. February 2010 21:38

Every so often, somebody asks me about a personal training plan for adventure racing.  They have an adventure race on their horizon and want to train up to it.  Everyone hears about marathon training plans, and sports like cycling and triathlon have a myriad of formal plans to get you into tip-top shape.  

Getting "race-ready" for an adventure race is so different than all of these other sports.  The most obvious difference is that adventure racing is not so easily quantifiable:  a marathon training plan guides the athlete to run 26 miles of pavement . . . an athlete's plan preparing for an Ironman targets 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of biking, and 26 miles of running.  Adventure races are more commonly measured in duration instead of distance, so you'll see things like this 4-6 hour Spring race from HRAdventure (they also have a 10-12 hour version).

For longer races, like our Untamed New England, when race durations are measured in days, I picture the collective eyes of traditional fitness coaches just glazing over.  Following common marathon training, to be ready for a 3-day adventure race you should build up progressively longer and longer adventure races until a few weeks before the real race you complete your "longest training" of about 2.5 days in duration.  While I think that is one way to prepare for a race, I don't think it's a good fit for most people.
 

Navigation can be a key element to any AR training plan!

I plan to have a few posts this month on the subject of preparing for a "big" adventure race.  I don't claim to be a professional endurance coach (although I was a certified personal trainer at one point about 15 years ago) but I do think I can offer some suggestions based on my experience as both a racer and an organizer.  I welcome input from people smarter and more experienced with this than I am, and we're working to partner with a serious expert to build a basic training plan for the "amateur athlete" in preparation for our 3-day adventure race this August.  We hope to have such a plan available by the end of this month, and that will probably be more scientific than what I'm going to offer here.  Stay tuned!