Answer: The Ultra Trail Coaching platform is intended for trail and ultra trailrunners. While it has all the features to be a great platform for ultrarunners, you can also use UTC if your trail race does not exceed the marathon distance. UTC gets you as fit as possible to any event.
Answer: No you don’t need to be signed up for a race. You can use a “Placeholder Event” which will be used as a goal moment to get you as fit as possible. If you just want to make progression as a runner without racing, you can use this feature.
Answer: Yes. UTC works for shorter distance trail races as well.
Answer: Definitely. The platform works very well for athletes who are setting their first steps in ultra territory.
Answer: No you don’t. We analyse your running history from Strava, and use Rate of Perceived Exertion instead of heart rate zones. This allows you to get to the right intensity, and the right training load, without the need for heart rate zones.
Answer: You can change this in your profile settings.
Answer: The training schedule currently focuses on running only, it doesn’t schedule any cross training. It does take cross training into account when you perform them on your own.
An example:
An athlete wants to train 12 hours a week but he also wants to keep cycling 4 hours a week. This athlete should put his UTC training settings on 8 hours per week.
When this athlete does his rides, they will be added to his overall training load and they will influence his training schedule, especially if intensity was high during these workouts.
Answer: The UTC algorithm personalizes your ramp up settings depending on your running history, injury susceptibility, etc. So if you want to build from running 6 hours a week to 10 hours a week, UTC will work out the increase in training load for you. You don’t need to change planned runs with cross training on your own. You can always cycle and swim a bit apart from your training schedule to loosen up and recover, as long as you keep the intensity low.
Answer: Yes. Unplanned workouts in other sports will be added to your overall training load and will influence your training schedule.
Answer: You can go to your personal Training Settings and change these settings here. Depending on which setting you change, your training schedule will be regenerated.
Answer: UTC drafts a first training schedule when you sign up. Then, with your personal feedback (answering the WhatsApp questions) and the data feedback (pace, elevation change, etc.) your training schedule gets adapted on-the-go. There’s no point at showing the draft of what’s coming up the next couple of months as this will always change a lot. For practical reasons, you can use your Race Readiness report to look at how many hours of training is planned for certain periods, but the “content” of these hours is still unknown.
Answer: Yes you can find the tutorial here:
Sleep data
Answer: It helps. We use Garmin Health data to further individualize or optimize your training schedule. If you had a really bad night we might postpone the workout for that day, especially if it’s an intense interval workout.
Answer: Yes you can.
Answer: If you have a Garmin watch with optical heart rate measurement, you just need to sleep with your watch for at least 3 weeks every night before we are able to use your sleeping data.
Race
Answer: The most important factor of becoming better as an athlete is consistency. Year in year out consistent training. It would be a shame to let the fitness level that you achieved drop again by stopping your structured training, only picking it up the next season with a new goal. Use the period between seasons to work on weakness and improve further. Of course, you can use UTC for this.
Answer: Currently not. You should pick your race furthest in the future as your A race, and then use the other race as a B race. With B races, you can choose how important they are and this will influence your taper period.
Answer: You can always change you A race. This will impact your training. If your new A race is earlier, your training will be compacted. If your new A race is later, your training will be extended.
Answer: Currently that is not possible. We would suggest using your A race for your training plan, and after completing your A race continuing with UTC.
Answer: No. Number one priority is cardiovascular fitness. UTC will try to help out finding elevation change in your area by suggesting hills to train on.
Answer: We would suggest setting up an A race for this year / season and then after that race, set up your multi stage race as you A race.