You can accumulate frequency, get strong, plan your fuel and gain a borderline fanatical knowledge of your kit.

My athletes all get lovely, personalised training plans that are built after a review of their mobility, flexibility, muscular balance and so on, conducted in a dynamic screening. Nonetheless, I try to always make sure they understand the fundamentals, so if life throws in a curve ball, they know how to adapt. The fundamentals tend to look like the following questions.

Reps and sets depend on the focus of the block. If you’ve just enjoyed an end of season break, or had a hiatus from strength training, you will need to prepare your body before you start to go heavy. That means something like 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps of relatively low load, whilst focusing on form and full range of movement.

From there it again depends on the focus of the training phase and the idiosyncrasies of the athlete. For a max strength phase, for example, probably something like 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 8 reps. The variations from there are endless depending on the objectives, but hopefully you see the point regarding manipulating the reps, sets, weights and the way an exercise is performed to match the goal.

I really like my athletes to have at least 6 consecutive weeks before we change things up. I’ll typically give them an 8-week block to give a couple of weeks’ buffer and, depending on their consistency, assess where to go from there.

Strength programmes should be seen as stepping stones. You can only get to the next one when you’ve done enough of the last to make that step forwards.

Once or twice a week is what most people can manage alongside their endurance training. If strength is seen as a real limiter, though, for instance a runner who struggles with lifting their knees, we might even get them doing three sessions a week out of season and drop run sessions to accommodate.

Less than an hour, realistically. If it takes longer, the session needs to be tighter, or split into muscle groups, or upper body and legs.

I would also recommend timing your rest, to prevent you from procrastinating or wandering off to do other things. This is something I have to be really strict about, or I start tinkering with bikes.

It does depend on the exercises and the training phase, but as a general rule, about three seconds on the way down (the eccentric phase), and two seconds on the way up (the concentric phase).

Think in joint angles. You usually want to move the joint through its full range. If you are limited by mobility or flexibility, then I would suggest that is what you should be working on before you look to load the exercise further.

There was actually some recent research on this, and they saw the best results with 3 minutes of recovery. Essentially, you want enough rest so you can repeat the exercise with real quality and stress the muscle or muscles in a maximal way. As mentioned above, time it, to keep you from drifting or, conversely, to avoid skimping on recovery.

This means performing two, sometimes three, exercises back to back, followed by a recovery period. Often an opposing pair, like chest and then into a back exercise (antagonistic supersets). Sometimes it could also be a compound lift and then an unrelated isolation exercise, such as a Romanian deadlift and then calf raises.

So, so badly. You really need your muscles to be warm and your joints to be loose before you start lifting. Think about it like stretching a cold rubber band. It snaps. Roll it around a bit between your hands and suddenly it’s a lot more pliable and stretchy.

Start by performing more reps within the prescribed range. If you can max out the range and the sets whilst maintaining good form, then look to increase the load.

As a general rule, only increase single-limb exercises by a maximum of 2.5 kg, and for bilateral exercises a maximum of 5 kg.

Alternatively, if mobility or flexibility is an issue for you, keep the weight constant and only look to increase it if you are confident that your technique is spot on. My athletes all know they can send me videos for comment, but if you don’t have that luxury, performing in front of a mirror, or filming yourself, and remembering the point above about joint angles, should help you assess.

Each week, though, you should be looking to make some form of step forwards based on the above.

For an endurance athlete? Definitely not. I completely understand that strength training isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and going to a class can help massively with motivation. So if it’s the difference between doing some form of strength work or doing nothing, then do book that class.

However, it’s important to understand what HIIT training is. It’s just more cardiovascular training on top of your endurance training load.

Strength work is about testing your ability to lift or move things. So it should be done with focus, and it should stress the capacity of your muscles to produce power.

If you struggle for motivation, I would argue the greatest motivator is truly understanding why you are doing something, and ensuring you have targets to achieve.

For instance, do you suffer from Achilles tendinopathy? Then those calf raises are going to introduce length to that Achilles and really encourage it back to health. They’ll hopefully also improve ankle mobility and stability. That exercise is going to help make the injury a thing of the past.

My athletes all get lovely, personalised training plans that are built after a review of their mobility, flexibility, muscular balance and so on, conducted in a dynamic screening. Nonetheless, I try to always make sure they understand the fundamentals, so if life throws in a curve ball, they know how to adapt. The fundamentals tend to look like the following questions.

Reps and sets depend on the focus of the block. If you’ve just enjoyed an end of season break, or had a hiatus from strength training, you will need to prepare your body before you start to go heavy. That means something like 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps of relatively low load, whilst focusing on form and full range of movement.

From there it again depends on the focus of the training phase and the idiosyncrasies of the athlete. For a max strength phase, for example, probably something like 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 8 reps. The variations from there are endless depending on the objectives, but hopefully you see the point regarding manipulating the reps, sets, weights and the way an exercise is performed to match the goal.

I really like my athletes to have at least 6 consecutive weeks before we change things up. I’ll typically give them an 8-week block to give a couple of weeks’ buffer and, depending on their consistency, assess where to go from there.

Strength programmes should be seen as stepping stones. You can only get to the next one when you’ve done enough of the last to make that step forwards.

Once or twice a week is what most people can manage alongside their endurance training. If strength is seen as a real limiter, though, for instance a runner who struggles with lifting their knees, we might even get them doing three sessions a week out of season and drop run sessions to accommodate.

Less than an hour, realistically. If it takes longer, the session needs to be tighter, or split into muscle groups, or upper body and legs.

I would also recommend timing your rest, to prevent you from procrastinating or wandering off to do other things. This is something I have to be really strict about, or I start tinkering with bikes.

It does depend on the exercises and the training phase, but as a general rule, about three seconds on the way down (the eccentric phase), and two seconds on the way up (the concentric phase).

Think in joint angles. You usually want to move the joint through its full range. If you are limited by mobility or flexibility, then I would suggest that is what you should be working on before you look to load the exercise further.

There was actually some recent research on this, and they saw the best results with 3 minutes of recovery. Essentially, you want enough rest so you can repeat the exercise with real quality and stress the muscle or muscles in a maximal way. As mentioned above, time it, to keep you from drifting or, conversely, to avoid skimping on recovery.

This means performing two, sometimes three, exercises back to back, followed by a recovery period. Often an opposing pair, like chest and then into a back exercise (antagonistic supersets). Sometimes it could also be a compound lift and then an unrelated isolation exercise, such as a Romanian deadlift and then calf raises.

So, so badly. You really need your muscles to be warm and your joints to be loose before you start lifting. Think about it like stretching a cold rubber band. It snaps. Roll it around a bit between your hands and suddenly it’s a lot more pliable and stretchy.

Start by performing more reps within the prescribed range. If you can max out the range and the sets whilst maintaining good form, then look to increase the load.

As a general rule, only increase single-limb exercises by a maximum of 2.5 kg, and for bilateral exercises a maximum of 5 kg.

Alternatively, if mobility or flexibility is an issue for you, keep the weight constant and only look to increase it if you are confident that your technique is spot on. My athletes all know they can send me videos for comment, but if you don’t have that luxury, performing in front of a mirror, or filming yourself, and remembering the point above about joint angles, should help you assess.

Each week, though, you should be looking to make some form of step forwards based on the above.

For an endurance athlete? Definitely not. I completely understand that strength training isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and going to a class can help massively with motivation. So if it’s the difference between doing some form of strength work or doing nothing, then do book that class.

However, it’s important to understand what HIIT training is. It’s just more cardiovascular training on top of your endurance training load.

Strength work is about testing your ability to lift or move things. So it should be done with focus, and it should stress the capacity of your muscles to produce power.

If you struggle for motivation, I would argue the greatest motivator is truly understanding why you are doing something, and ensuring you have targets to achieve.

For instance, do you suffer from Achilles tendinopathy? Then those calf raises are going to introduce length to that Achilles and really encourage it back to health. They’ll hopefully also improve ankle mobility and stability. That exercise is going to help make the injury a thing of the past.

Once the effort is long enough for the number to settle, however, heart rate becomes very useful. Particularly when you have a power meter as well.

For instance, a comparison I like is the decoupling rate. In a long ride where you hold a steady power, it is possible to see what your heart rate does in response. Early in a long ride the two should sit in a fairly stable relationship. Later, heart rate often climbs while power stays consistent. That rise — heart rate decoupling from power — is helpful information.

Over months, a smaller drift at the same sort of ride is one sign that fitness is moving the right way. In contrast, a drift that is bigger than usual for you could potentially signal fatigue or illness. Recent work on long rides has tied the same drift to something more specific than a vague sense of fading. As heart rate climbs against a steady power, the power you can still hold at an easy-to-steady endurance intensity tends to fall with it. The goalposts move during the ride. Heart rate is often the first thing that demonstrates this.

Do not read every rise as fitness, fatigue or illness, though. Heat, dehydration and a poor night’s sleep can push heart rate up at the same power. So could a normal long effort in its own right. The rate of decoupling number (PWR:HR), therefore, is a prompt to look at the rest of the picture, not a diagnosis on its own.

If you do not have a power meter, heart rate is still super helpful. In fact, I would really encourage you to get comfortable using heart rate, power and perceived effort as interchangeable. When they agree, you can be confident. When they do not, that disagreement itself is useful information.

During 5-minute plus intervals, though, it is possible to use heart rate in a similar way to how you would use power and power training zones. Put simply, is your heart rate in the right range during the interval to stress the energy system you are looking to target with that interval. For this to work, of course, you need to know your heart rate zones and the ranges within which your heart rate must settle to be correctly hitting the right energy system. The starting point for this is gauging your threshold heart rate.

The field test I tend to use the most is a 30-minute time trial on a turbo, or an outside 10-mile time trial if you can persuade an athlete to sign up to a local race.

Ensure you use a heart rate strap rather than a wrist or arm strap. Optical heart rate monitors used by watches and wrist monitors are useful for tracking long-term patterns but, IMO, useless when you need accurate workout-based numbers. Heart rate straps are still the gold standard. On the date of writing this article, I completed a tempo run and during a 5-minute 5k-paced effort, there was a 20 bpm difference between the data from my chest strap and the optical heart rate monitor on my watch.

Warm up properly — at least 10 minutes, with some accelerations to get the fast-twitch muscle fibres going. Then ride 30 minutes as hard as you can genuinely sustain. We ignore the first 10 minutes and take the average heart rate across the final 20 minutes, minus 6 bpm, to give us a rough threshold heart rate.

A lab review of the 30-minute test, in cyclists and triathletes, found the last-20-minute heart rate repeatable, and also a little generous: on average it sat about six beats above a laboratory lactate threshold. Hence, we minus 6 bpm from the 20-minute average.

Knowing the number is the start. The useful part is using threshold heart rate and heart rate zones alongside whatever else you have. Power, if you have it. Perceived effort, always.

For instance, my threshold heart rate usually sits around 156 bpm. If I am into the 160s, I know I am working my VO2max. If I then go above about 165, I know I am shifting into the anaerobic systems. It really is as simple as that. Your numbers will not be the same as mine, but the habit should be the same: know what “around threshold” feels like, know what “a few beats over” means, etc.

The same anchor works for long events. These are my numbers, against a threshold of around 156 bpm.

There is an important practical point here for our triathletes. In training, hold the power and let heart rate tell you what the effort is becoming. In a long race, cap the heart rate and let the power come down. Defending a power number while heart rate climbs through the zones is how a good ride becomes a bad run.

Heart rate should also be an important factor in deciding whether today’s session should happen as written.

A common picture: the warm-up feels awful. The legs are heavy. Perceived effort is higher than it should be for the work in front of you. Then you look at heart rate. If it is much higher than normal for that effort or power, or much lower, something is up. The mismatch is the signal, not the direction of it.

If you have earned that fatigue — a big block, short sleep, sessions stacked up — scale the day down. Intensity, duration, or both. If you should not be that tired, because you have just had a recovery day or a run of easier sessions, it can be the first sign you are coming down with something. Heat, dehydration and a bad night can also influence the picture. The point is not to diagnose yourself from a warm-up, but the point is also not to force the session when heart rate and effort have both told you the day is different.

Heat acclimatisation is the process of repeatedly exposing the body to heat, resulting in physiological adaptations that improve tolerance to exercising in hot conditions.

The adaptations are remarkably comprehensive. They affect the cardiovascular system, sweating response, skin blood flow, fluid balance, perception of effort and the body’s ability to dissipate heat.

A significant proportion of the adaptations to heat occur during the first week of repeated exposure, with further adaptations developing during the second week.

Consensus recommendations generally suggest 1–2 weeks of repeated exercise-heat exposure for athletes preparing for competition in hot conditions. However, with life being as it is, and training adaptations always needing consistency, I would suggest starting at least 4 weeks out from your event. That gives you time to get the logistics of exposure set up and to get into a habit.

There are several ways of creating a heat stimulus without spending two weeks training overseas.

1. Train in the heat

Exercise in a genuinely hot environment and allow your body temperature to rise while maintaining a controlled training intensity. Traditional research protocols have commonly used temperatures around 30–40°C, with exercise performed at a low to moderate intensity.

It is really important that your training truly is at a lower intensity, because trying to carry out your normal high intensity sets is a recipe for heat distress rather than gently encouraging adaptations, which is our goal. Let the heat exposure do its job. You will have other opportunities for that smashfest.

Training in the heat can mean being out in the heat of the day in the summer, or it could mean indoors training in a warm room. The latter also requires care. Make sure the room you are training in is properly ventilated, because as your sweat evaporates it will expel humidity into the air, and without ventilation that humidity will create a lower oxygen environment. Trust me, you do not want to faint whilst still clipped into a bike on a turbo trainer. Messy…

2. Exercise first, then use passive heat

For the reasons above, this is personally my preferred method for my athletes.

Complete your normal training session in a temperate environment, then immediately expose yourself to heat. Examples include:

• Hot-water immersion
• Sauna
• Other forms of passive heat exposure

The advantage is that you can maintain the quality of your training session without the heat compromising your power, pace or technique.

The exercise raises your core temperature first. Passive heating then extends the period of thermal strain, providing an additional heat stimulus.

The evidence suggests that post-exercise sauna and hot-water immersion can produce broadly similar heat-acclimation adaptations when used as part of an appropriate programme.

With my athletes, we have found that about 15 minutes of post-strength-training sauna exposure has been quite effective. Logistically, because many gyms have a sauna, it is the method most likely to be repeated.

I must stress, the goal isn’t to see how long you can stay in the sauna. The goal is to provide a repeatable thermal stimulus without compromising your overall training programme.

The research shows that repeated exposures are important, but protocols vary considerably.

Traditional exercise-heat-acclimation programmes often use daily exposure for around 7–14 days, while passive heating studies have used anything from several consecutive days to around three sessions per week.

I would prioritise consistency and repeatability over trying to maximise heat exposure at every opportunity. Whatever method you go for, it needs to fit within your training programme without compromising your progress.

As mentioned above, I really like my athletes starting a heat acclimation protocol at least 4 weeks out. The research might indicate adaptations within 14 days, but let’s face it, it’s yet another thing to be on top of and the logistics of following a protocol aren’t always easy. So for me, 4 weeks gives us time to work out the kinks.

Do remember though, if you are travelling to the hot environment before the race, the time spent there can also provide an opportunity for further acclimation. If it is a major event, something like Kona or another world champs, going out a week before can do wonders for your heat acclimation as well as just your general ability to relax in the environment. Don’t underestimate what feeling relaxed in your environment can do for your performance.

The easiest way is to have at least one low-intensity session that is repeated over the course of the protocol, and to monitor your heart rate closely. Hopefully, in time, you’ll see:

Repeated heat exposure at home — particularly exercise followed by passive heat exposure such as a sauna or hot-water immersion — provides a practical alternative, and can produce many of the physiological adaptations associated with heat acclimation.

The most important principles are:

Ultra-running suffers from a bit of delusion on the concept of difficulty — it is like I am somewhat numb to it. I think I put that down to how I approach these events in terms of my preparation, the expectation that things can and will go wrong — you quite literally have to think on your feet to solve problems that could ultimately be race ending — and most importantly — I want to enjoy every moment of whatever it is I am doing, even if it sucks.

It’s important for me to share some of this to add a bit of context to what I am going to say. To bring it back and actually answer the question — this is obviously a very physically and mentally demanding event, with a huge number of variables to contend with.

People laugh when I say the running was the easy bit. I know I’m somewhat joking but I do mean that. I feel the real confidence came from deconstructing the event into its core pieces, practicing each aspect of this, and still being open to all of my planning being tipped on its head. I read every book I could get my hands on, race reports dating back 10 years, podcasts — anything with MDS in the title — I’ve probably looked at it.

I wanted to get a glimpse into this world, and work with Rich to map out the different challenges so I could practice these in isolation. A personal favourite was eating freeze dried expedition meals on a trading floor in London to taste them all ahead of the race. That definitely raised some eyebrows.

After every stage, I was religious about this routine.

After finishing (took turns with another guy being first back in the tent) in true MDS tradition, it was our honour to clean the tent rug from sand and stones for the rest of the guys. The rugs weighed a tonne, and after running for hours and it now being peak sunshine during the day, this was a workout in itself.

I’d fill one of my freeze dried meals with water, add 2x Knorr stock cubes to get salt back into me, and leave this in the sun for 20 minutes to rehydrate while I lay with my legs up on my backpack to try and drain some fluid away and just generally relax, then get my food in ASAP.

Next, I had the pleasure of going to the medical tent to drain my 9 blisters with syringes (I had become emotionally attached to them by the end of the week), and inject them with iodine to prevent infection. As someone who hates needles, this was a form of self inflicted torture. I’d then go back in the evening to re-drain them and tape them up ready to go for the next day. I deliberately did this in two separate trips, to let them breathe during the day and so I had two opportunities to clean my feet and hands (I had become obsessed with this).

If they got infected the medical staff could pull me from the course. At the end of the 100km day, I had to get a doctor to treat my feet because I was so cooked that you could have hit me over the head with a cricket bat and I wouldn’t have realised. I actually fell asleep on the treatment bed as he was doing all of this and he woke me up when I was good to go and hobble (sleepwalk) back to my tent.

After the med tent, went to get my 5L water ration for the rest of the day. Remaining sunlight hours consisted of laying horizontal with feet elevated, occasionally getting up to stretch the legs and cheer the rest of the guys back into the tent.

I’d then get all my kit sorted for the next day, Phoenix bars broken up and prepped into zip lock bags and put in my waist belt pockets, breakfast laid out for the following morning and everything else cleared away so I could just be on autopilot.

I observed a lot of people faffing around, or delaying eating so they could go to the med tent (often for hours) which I think is really sub-optimal. Your body is completely catabolic at that stage and will start to break down muscle for energy due to the calorie deficit if you are not careful.

Going into this event, I had no real idea what to expect, or how my body would react to the heat, the full pack weight and the lack of sleep, but I knew I had made the most out of my training (which was a bit compressed, on the back of completing Wildstrubel 110 in September, and coming out of that injured which I had to manage for a couple of months).

I completed the Pilgrims Challenge in February, which was a brilliant prep race and many other MDS hopefuls were also there practicing with their kit, and getting some good volume in the legs. It totals 110km and ~2,500m D+ split in 2x equal stages on the Saturday and Sunday. I managed to place 12th overall in this, and my times on each day were only ~10 seconds apart. I have no idea how I managed to be so consistent but I felt really strong and was holding back, treating it as a training run. Quietly confident, but was not counting my chickens yet.

For the MdS itself, I managed to place in the top 15% overall, just outside the top 200 of ~1,500 in total. This was quite a surprise to me — I was never doing the event “just to complete” but at the same time, I wasn’t pushing for a particular position either. I knew I was in good form, but I was just doing my own thing, and trying to get stronger each day, and finish each stage feeling fresh and fired up ready to go for the next. No matter where I would start the day (often further back with my tent mates), I’d still end up finishing with the same faces towards the end of each day — I guess the order of everything just naturally works itself out.

• Back to back long trail runs — the bread and butter of pretty much any ultra event. This forms the core base fitness and leg strength that you can then bolt event specific workouts on top of.
• Short hill reps (30–60s) — I cannot lie, I was somewhat sceptical when Rich was focussing on these so much (some weeks doing 2x sessions). I can categorically say this was probably the most beneficial part of the plan — the dunes that we are running up and down were constantly undulating, and I felt so strong being able to keep momentum going because of this. Running, or I should say, shuffling is easier than pure walking, as you lose all momentum and sink downwards. I was able to keep this going to glide along because of these reps.
• Single leg and core work in the gym — core strength was super important, keeping yourself stable especially with the pack and water weight and not letting your running form degrade was key to remaining uninjured and mobile.
• Tune up races (Pilgrims Challenge) — explained above.
• Training camp in the Canary Islands — warm weather and terrain specific training.
• Hilly days focussing on ascending and descending.
• Undulating days and pure sand days.
• Practice fuelling and hydration — in kit, on tired legs, repeatedly.

The biggest thing I take away from this, is to not set artificial boundaries on yourself based on what you currently know. Train for the events you want to do, not what you think you can do. There were people of all ages and shapes and sizes — this is a mental game rather than physical. Yes, there is a high base level of fitness and strength needed, but it’s what is going on in your head that separates people from succeeding. All of this extends far beyond running and into my personal life as well — why would I ever sell myself short or think I can’t do something? That doesn’t come from a place of arrogance, but a place of confidence knowing that my absolute worst case scenario is that I learn something.

Before Lost Horizon, my ambition was fairly simple: complete my first ultra and try to do it within three days.

Rich knew that was the goal and, as he has done with quite a few of my slightly questionable cycling ambitions, he never tried to talk me out of it. Instead, he helped me work backwards from what I wanted to achieve and broke what initially looked like a fairly ridiculous challenge into something manageable. Lost Horizon was probably the biggest test of that preparation so far.

Day one started in Soria at 7am and, initially at least, everything went pretty much to plan. The legs felt good, the fitness was there and I was able to settle into the event.

As the kilometres accumulated, however, I began to understand that an ultra is about far more than how many watts you can produce.

You can have the best plan possible before the start, but the reality is that almost nothing goes completely to plan. You arrive somewhere after the shops have closed. A planned refuelling stop disappears. You haven’t eaten enough. You sleep less than expected. Saddle sores become increasingly painful. Something that seemed insignificant six hours earlier suddenly becomes the only thing you can think about.

Then you adapt and keep moving.

By day three, the physical challenge had almost become secondary to the mental one. You are tired, sleep deprived and under-fuelled, and every little problem becomes magnified.

That was probably the biggest thing Lost Horizon taught me. You cannot fully prepare someone for the mental side of an ultra. Until you have experienced being that tired and uncomfortable and still having to make the decision to get back on the bike and continue, it is very difficult to understand what it feels like.

What Rich could prepare me for was the physical side of it.

And the biggest compliment I can give him is that my fitness never let me down. At no point during the event did I feel under-trained or think that I wasn’t physically capable of completing it. My legs weren’t the limiting factor. After hundreds of kilometres of riding, that gave me enormous confidence because however difficult things became, I knew the underlying fitness was there.

That is entirely down to the preparation.

The things that tested me most were the things that are almost impossible to recreate in training: cumulative sleep deprivation, missed fuelling stops, saddle discomfort and the psychological effect of knowing you still have hours and hours left to ride.

In a strange way, those are also the reasons I came away wanting to do another one.

Ultra cycling pushes you so far outside your normal comfort zone that you learn a lot about yourself very quickly. It teaches you to solve problems when you are exhausted, to stop worrying when the original plan falls apart and to become adaptable enough to keep finding a way forward.

And it takes you to places you would otherwise probably never see. Roads and trails you wouldn’t think to drive, and places that would take days to reach on foot. For hours you can have nothing around you except your bike, the landscape and the route ahead.

There is something pretty special about that.

I also came away knowing that physically I had been as well prepared as I could have been. For that, I owe a huge amount to Rich.

The problem for him now is that completing my first ultra hasn’t got it out of my system.

Quite the opposite. I am already wondering what ridiculous challenge I can give him to prepare me for next.