Preparing for a trail race is much more than a sporting challenge! Wondering how to reconcile a busy daily life with training? How to adapt your program to your level, your goals, your environment, or even your menstrual cycle? In this guide, I offer you my best tips to fully experience your trail adventure!
Defining Realistic and Motivating Goals
It is essential to set yourself clear goals, whether short, medium, or long-term, to motivate yourself and structure your training. For example, you could decide to participate in a 20km race, improve your endurance on your usual routes, or beat your personal record on a certain distance. Each goal, even modest, allows you to see your progress.
By setting achievable steps, you can measure your improvements over time and celebrate each success. This reminds you that your efforts are paying off and encourages you to keep going.
Finding Time to Train for the Trail
In a busy life, it is not always easy to find time to train, especially when your schedule is already full with work, an active social life, and for some, family life. However, there are several solutions to adapt your sessions to your reality. For example, it is not necessary to train five times a week from the start. A few well-planned sessions (3 or 4) can be enough to maintain a regular routine and allow you to progress at your own pace.
Another option is to take advantage of the lunch break. Running between noon and two can be a practical solution, as it allows me to come back home in the evening and enjoy a relaxing moment, have time to cook, or take care of myself. Getting up earlier for a morning session is also an alternative to consider. It’s not always easy at first, but by adopting this habit, you can go to bed earlier in the evening and organize your day more efficiently.
If you are a mom, try to organize yourself to free up some time for yourself. This may involve planning your sessions according to family availability. Also, weekends are an excellent opportunity to extend your sessions. While weekday workouts usually last about an hour, you can take advantage of a Sunday morning for a longer outing, such as a trail run, which can even turn into a family activity where everyone progresses at their own pace.
Even a 40 to 50-minute session is beneficial and represents time saved. These short slots can easily fit into your day, whether it’s picking up bread, returning from school after dropping off the kids, or even running to work.
Moreover, it is entirely possible to add endurance or strength training sessions at home. These easy and quick sessions allow you to vary your training without having to travel. Our PPG module available on the app, for example, allows you to strengthen yourself to avoid injuries, directly from your home for durations more or less short depending on your availability.
Personalized Training Plan Adapted to Your Schedule
Training for the trail means building a tailor-made plan adapted to your level and goals, taking into account your schedule and personal constraints.
With RunMotion Coach, you choose when to do your sessions: during the week, prioritize short and effective sessions, and on weekends, opt for a longer outing. You can even adapt your training to the accessible terrains around you. This evolving plan allows you to progress at your own pace, stay motivated, and avoid overtraining.
Vary Your Training According to Your Environment
The choice of terrain is a key element to diversify and optimize your trail training. Depending on the environment in which you evolve, you can exploit different surfaces and elevations to specifically work on your endurance, speed, balance, and resistance. For example, urban routes allow you to enjoy green spaces, bike paths, and surface variations, while natural mountain terrains offer rugged trails and elevation, ideal for strengthening your stability and getting used to the trail’s unexpected challenges.
On RunMotion, you can specify the terrains you have access to. Whether you have long climbs, short slopes, mountain access, or only an urban environment, the training plan adapts to your situation. The app offers sessions designed to make the most of your training conditions!
Adapt Your Training to Your Menstrual Cycle
The menstrual cycle influences your energy level and recovery capacity. By taking into account your different phases, you can adjust the intensity of your training to maintain your progress and motivation. Some moments are conducive to more intense efforts, while others require gentler sessions, or even refraining from running if you are in too much pain, if you don’t feel like it, or if you feel weak. By integrating these adjustments, you stay in tune with your body and avoid overtraining. If you are interested in the subject, check out our complete article right here!
Strength Training to Prevent Injuries
Trail running involves the use of many muscles and increases the risk of injury, which is why it is important to include strength training sessions. By working on your core strength, stability, and leg strength with exercises like squats and lunges, you effectively prepare yourself to tackle technical sections and unexpected challenges on the trails. The advantage is that you can do these sessions at home, making them less restrictive to incorporate into your daily life.
Women More Enduring Than Men in Ultra-Trails
While men seem to have the advantage on some distances, ultra-endurance offers women a unique opportunity to demonstrate their perseverance and effort management. In ultra-trails, nothing is impossible: this is where our full potential is revealed.
On classic distances (marathon or less), men run on average 10 to 12% faster than women. In ultra-trails (100km and more), this gap narrows, and in some races, the best women finish ahead of men.
This can be explained by several reasons:
Women tend to better manage their pace over time, avoiding too fast starts and optimizing their energy consumption. In the UTMB® Mont-Blanc, it is very noticeable when analyzing the first 200 in the overall standings. It is not uncommon for women to finish in the same time as men who have a 1-hour lead at half-time.
From a physiological point of view, women have a greater proportion of slow-twitch muscle fibers (type I) than men. They have less explosiveness in general, but more endurance. Furthermore, they have a better ability to use fats as an energy source, delaying the depletion of glycogen reserves.
Finally, Find Your Balance and Progress at Your Own Pace
Training for the trail as a woman is not so different from when you are a man, but taking into account certain specificities can be very useful. It is about finding the right balance between a tailor-made training plan, realistic goals, and sessions that take into account your environment and constraints. By regularly combining complete sessions – including endurance, strength, and recovery – you prepare yourself to face the challenges of the trail while preserving your health and motivation. You never regret a trail run. So, put on your sneakers, organize your workouts, and hit the trails: every stride brings you closer to your goals.