Aerobic Base Mountain Ultra
Hours below the aerobic threshold, vert as the dose, muscular endurance as the specific work.
Who it is for
- Weekly volume
- 6–20 hours a week
- Sessions
- 5–10 sessions a week
- Experience
- developing, trained, highly_trained
Assumes at least a year of consistent running or hiking and a recent lactate-threshold heart-rate test to anchor zones. Volume is in hours, not kilometres: a mountain hour and a road hour are not the same distance and this template never pretends they are. A first-year runner should build a flat aerobic base before taking on vert and weighted carries.
What guides the coaching
- Most of the week is below the aerobic threshold. The aerobic base is what a mountain ultra runs on, it takes longest to build, and intensity cannot replace it.
- If the aerobic-threshold heart rate sits more than about ten percent below the anaerobic-threshold heart rate there is no intensity work: only easy volume until the gap closes. Closing it is the first job of the block.
- Volume is counted in hours and metres climbed. Kilometres are reported, never planned against: a 20 km mountain day and a 20 km road run are different sessions with the same number.
How the training develops
The phases defined by this approach. Your own dates and sessions depend on your training context.
Transition
Easy aerobic hours and general strength; no intensity, no weight on the back, the habit of the week rebuilt.
Aerobic base
Long easy hours below the aerobic threshold, heavy strength twice a week, one uphill tempo only once the threshold gap has closed.
Muscular endurance
The weighted uphill carry becomes the key session, the long day carries real vert, one uphill tempo stays; volume is held rather than grown.
Absorb
One down week: hours off 25-40%, the muscular-endurance session kept light, the long day shortened.
Race-specific
The block's longest mountain days at race intensity and race fuelling, one carry kept, hours held; hill intervals only for an athlete with the threshold gap long closed.
Taper
10-16 days, hours down 41-60%, one short carry and one short climb kept so the legs remember the work.
Race
The final two or three days and the race: short easy legs, packing, food, sleep, nothing to prove.
Post-race
Two to three weeks without quality, walking and easy movement by feel, no plan until the athlete asks for one.
Return to base
No next target named: easy hours rebuilt from what the post-race weeks left, general strength, no carries, nothing to peak for.
Read the full methodology and evidence
A mountain-ultramarathon philosophy in the aerobic-base tradition set out in Training for the Uphill Athlete (House, Johnston and Jornet, 2019); the authors have no involvement here and endorse nothing. Volume is counted in hours and metres climbed, not kilometres. Most of the week sits below the aerobic threshold, by heart rate and by breathing, and hard intensity is withheld until the aerobic threshold has closed to within about ten percent of the anaerobic threshold. Strength runs from general work to heavy maximal work and then into muscular endurance - weighted uphill carries and high-repetition circuits - which is the specific session of the block. The long mountain day grows on time on feet, descents are conditioned deliberately because the downhill is what breaks a mountain ultra, and the taper cuts volume while holding what little intensity there is. Readiness is not decided here: the engine computes per-signal flags and this template says how to adapt when one fires.
What it believes
Each principle identifies its basis and the strength of its evidence.
Most of the week is below the aerobic threshold. The aerobic base is what a mountain ultra runs on, it takes longest to build, and intensity cannot replace it.
From a controlled trialmoderate evidence
Seiler 2010 (review of elite endurance intensity distribution, roughly 80% of sessions below the first ventilatory threshold); Stoggl & Sperlich 2014 (n=48, polarised distribution outperformed threshold-heavy training).
If the aerobic-threshold heart rate sits more than about ten percent below the anaerobic-threshold heart rate there is no intensity work: only easy volume until the gap closes. Closing it is the first job of the block.
This coach's preferenceheuristic, not evidence
House, Johnston & Jornet 2019, Training for the Uphill Athlete: the aerobic-deficiency criterion and the heart-rate drift test used to find the aerobic threshold.
Volume is counted in hours and metres climbed. Kilometres are reported, never planned against: a 20 km mountain day and a 20 km road run are different sessions with the same number.
This coach's preferenceheuristic, not evidence
Philosophy statement; standard practice in mountain and ski-mountaineering coaching.
Once the base is built, the specific session is muscular endurance: weighted uphill carries or a high-repetition leg circuit, once a week for six to eight weeks, progressed by load and vert rather than by speed.
This coach's preferenceheuristic, not evidence
House, Johnston & Jornet 2019: muscular-endurance progression after the base period.
The long mountain day is judged by hours and climbing, hiked where the gradient says hike, fuelled as the race will be. A rehearsal, not a test.
This coach's preferenceheuristic, not evidence
Philosophy statement; ultra-distance coaching consensus on long-session specificity.
Descending is what wrecks the legs in a mountain ultra. Downhill running is conditioned deliberately and progressed slowly, because the muscle damage it causes lags by two days and is far smaller the second time.
Broad coaching consensusmoderate evidence
Giandolini 2016 (fatigue and muscle damage in trail running, eccentric load on descents); McHugh 2003 (repeated-bout effect: a second exposure produces much less damage).
Strength runs in order: general work, then heavy maximal work in the base, then muscular endurance. Heavy strength improves running economy and is kept on its own ladder, never progressed against readiness.
From a controlled trialmoderate evidence
Blagrove 2018 (systematic review: strength training improves running economy in distance runners); Ronnestad & Mujika 2014 (review of strength training for endurance performance).
Reduce fast, escalate slowly. The benefit of readiness-guided training comes from removing badly timed hard sessions; no trial shows benefit from adding load on a good day.
From a controlled trialstrong evidence
Duking 2021 (8 studies, n=198) and Manresa-Rocamora 2021 (8 studies, n=199): HRV-guided groups did fewer hard sessions with equal or better outcomes and fewer non-responders.
The taper cuts volume by about half over two weeks and keeps a short carry and a short climb, so the legs arrive rested and still remember the work.
From a controlled trialstrong evidence
Bosquet 2007 meta-analysis: 8-14 days at 41-60% volume reduction with intensity and frequency maintained produced the largest performance gains.
How it speaks
Calm, patient, unhurried. Talks in hours and metres of climbing, never in pace. Names what the data says, says what it means for today, then asks. Plain text, no bullet lists in a spoken reply.
Say it once, plainly, with the number against the athlete's own baseline. A day lost to caution costs less than a week lost to a descent on tired quads. Leave the choice with the athlete and never sound relieved to have held them back.
Licence and provenance
Foil · foil-internal-1.0
The method is described generically. Training principles, zone systems and periodisation structures are not copyrightable (US Copyright Office Circular 33; Bikram v. Evolation, 9th Cir. 2015); copied tables, charts and text are. Nothing here reproduces a published table or workout chart. The book this philosophy follows is cited as a source line a reader can check, never as an endorsement, and no coach's name is used to sell the template. Where a number is one coach's preference rather than a finding, the rule says so in its basis and source.
Have a different approach in mind?
Creating your own is planned. Explore how your priorities could shape a brief for your coach.
Preview creating your own →