In this complete training for Desert Rats by UTMB, Moi Jimenez–Vert.run co-founder and professional ultrarunner for The North Face–will guide you each step of the way…from how to structure your workouts and train your nutrition to crossing the finish line.
Each of the distances in the Desert Rats, Trail running festival promises a fantastic adventure. This is a magical and very engaging place, full of heart.
You will be running trough stunning landscapes trough one of the most iconic areas in Colorado. You will be running in Altitude, it will be dry and potentially warm, so make sure to keep all of these factors in consideration.
The trails in the area are fast, nontechnical, and very runnable. Which is a challenge in itself… you need to be ready to run, to run consistently, and to run well. You need to be able to tolerate a similar stride and higher cadence than on many other trail races,, even if it sounds “easy” it can become a fairly big challenge if you’re unprepared.
There are 4 distances on this race festival, we will define the best way to train and prepare for the race, distance by distance.
Now, please, keep in mind, that you can do this! You can achieve your finish line if you train smart, recover well, and race with patience and a clear strategy. In vert.run we’ve seen it happen thousands of times, and we will transmit here some of the most valuable insights and tips that can help you achieve your finish line. If you need extra support, you can always hire a vert.run coach for $25/month, to guide you through your training for your race. The average finishing rate of our customers is over 90%, and close to 100% in races like Desert Rats by UTMB, so if you want to increase your chances of success, give Vert.run a try and check our 7-day free trial – including coaching.
9 and 21k:
We’re talking of a 9k with 200m+ and 21 km with 700 meters of elevation gain. Please don’t think about these two races as the “less challenging” one, each race, each distance has its challenges, and running 9 or 21 km on trails is not different.
Keep in mind that you will be running above 1,400 meters of altitude. With multiples ups and downs along the route to finish with a big climb on km 12th, so make sure that you are ready to climb strong that you’re saving legs for that, the most challenging part of your race.
Here are key elements that your training must have, every week:
Speed and power: Speed is one of the easiest things to work in this case. You want to develop the capacity to run at a good pace (speed is very personal and relative to the individual) without spending much energy and without fatiguing your muscles too much. Some of the best ways to work on this are simple workouts like Strides (here’s a guide on how to do them) or workouts a little more complex like 400 to 1,000-meter repeats. I recommend you start with some strides sessions during the first 2 weeks of your training block. Start with a warm-up of 20 to 30 minutes and then do 4 to 8 strides, of 20 or 30 seconds per stride. Always recover at least 2x the duration of the Stride. A session like this will help you work on your running economy and speed before jumping into more complex and demanding workouts. After a couple of weeks of Strides (don’t do them every day, 2 to 3 times a week is more than enough). You can transition into more speed-based workouts like the ones in our Speed Training plan by Grayson Murphy. Some examples are 4 to 6 by 400 meters repeats (to start) that then can evolve to 8, 10 by that distance.
Or classic ladder workouts like 3km hard, 1km recovery, 2km hard, 1km recovery, 1km hard, 500m recovery, 500 m hard for the 21km runners or a variation of 1.5km hard, 1km recover, 1km hard, 500m recovery, 500m hard for the 9 km runners, Where the shorter the interval, the harder you can run, but the more fatigued you will be, so it’s a fantastic way to work on your speed and fatigue.
Strength: Running fast doesn’t only depend on speed workouts, you need to have strong legs and core. First to not get injured and second to generate the power you need to run hard. 2 Strength sessions a week are a must. But hey, they don’t have to be 1h long. In vert.run we know that our customers are busy, so we have developed great follow-along strength and conditioning training routines that are not longer than 5 minutes. So in a 15-minute session, you can already work on your strength, core, and mobility. Just try to hit the basics and engage the key muscle groups you use during your running. We also have a strength coach that can guide you through your strength training if needed.
Tempo, LT, and sustained efforts: Sustained high-intensity efforts are key, to improving your efficiency and also getting used to running at a “race pace” during training. And sessions of Lactate Threshold are key for that. The idea here is to do repeats of between 5 and 10 minutes, sometimes even 15 or 20 minutes for more advanced runners, at a very controlled effort. This should feel like your 1h pace, meaning, a pace or effort that you can hold for 1h. Some classic sessions here are 6 by 5 minutes, on a flat, uphill, or rolling terrain. For Desert Rats, since we’re talking about a runnable race, doing them on an incline of 10% or less or a flat surface will be perfect. The idea is that you are running just at your LT, before going into the red… and that you maintain that effort for the length of the repeat. Then recover for ½ of the time of the duration of the repeat, and go again. This is also a fantastic session to practice fueling because the effort will be similar to your race effort.
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Endurance sessions: Endurance is awesome! Running is easy, but running forever, that’s what we all want to achieve. Endurance sessions can be a 30 minutes easy run the day after a hard workout, or your 1-2 hours long run on the weekend. This is all about time-on-feet and clocking hours. To tolerate the volume, strength is key, that’s why is earlier on this list, but without our long runs, it would become very hard to achieve our goals. The idea is always to keep the pace easy, and sustainable, maybe add some acceleration here and there. And you can distribute these sessions to have a different focus. For example, one weekend your long run can be focused on uphill strength, so you put the focus on running with more “effort” on the climbs, and the next weekend you do it on the downhills, and so on. This is also great for working on your race fueling, nutrition, and gear testing.
Recovery: Eating well, and sleeping well… that’s the key to recovery. Remember, every hard effort must be balanced with recovery and resting time. In vert, we love to say #Resting Is Training. Because is true, if you don’t rest, you won’t assimilate the training that you have done, so allow yourself to have at least 1 day off every week. Make sure to eat well before, during, and after your runs and then you can always add some foam rolling sessions like this one. I’m personally a fan of foam rolling!
50 km:
48 fast km, with 1,050 meters of elevation gain, so a Mountain Index of 22. That means that on average you will climb 22 meters per km. This is a key metric we use in Vert to guide the training of our athletes, trying to replicate racing conditions while training all over the world.
You are going to be constantly above 1,400 meters of altitude. And the race kickoff with a challenging climb, the steepest one of the race. After this first climb (and downhill) you will have a route that’s consistently up and down, There’s not much breaks, you will have to develop the capacity of tolerating such a challenging route. To finish, you have a second, massive climb, starting at km 38th, so you will have to be sure to arrive with enough energy and ready to crush that climb and descent.
This race will challenge your capacity to climb strong and run downhill well, over and over again, during the 48 km, accumulating fatigue as the distance evolves, so you need to become very efficient on that.
Here are key elements that your training must have, every week:
Speed and power: Similarly than in our 21km speed block description. Speed is one of the easiest things to work in this case. You want to develop the capacity to run at a good pace (speed is very personal and relative to the individual) without spending much energy and without fatiguing your muscles too much. Some of the best ways to work on this are simple workouts like Strides (here’s a guide on how to do them) or workouts a little more complex like 400 to 1,000-meter repeats. I recommend you start with some strides sessions during the first 2 weeks of your training block. Start with a warm-up of 20 to 30 minutes and then do 4 to 8 strides, of 20 or 30 seconds per stride. Always recover at least 2x the duration of the Stride. A session like this will help you work on your running economy and speed before jumping into more complex and demanding workouts. After a couple of weeks of Strides (don’t do them every day, 2 to 3 times a week is more than enough). You can transition into more speed-based workouts like the ones in our Speed Training plan by Grayson Murphy. Some examples are 4 to 6 by 400 meters repeats (to start) that then can evolve to 8, 10 by that distance.
Our classic ladder workouts like 3km hard, 1km recovery, 2km hard, 1km recovery, 1km hard, 500m recovery, 500 m hard. You can do this set, one time on your first speed session and then after a couple of times doing it (once a week max) you can increase to do 2 sets per session, towards the end of your training block. Now, the shorter the interval, the harder you can run, but the more fatigued you will be, so it’s a fantastic way to work on your speed and fatigue.
Strength: Running fast doesn’t only depend on speed workouts, you need to have strong legs and core. First to not get injured and second to generate the power you need to run hard. 2 Strength sessions a week are a must. But hey, they don’t have to be 1h long. In vert.run we know that our customers are busy, so we have developed great follow-along strength and conditioning training routines that are not longer than 5 minutes. So in a 15-minute session, you can already work on your strength, core, and mobility. Just try to hit the basics and engage the key muscle groups you use during your running. And yeah, this will help you cover the basics for a 48 km race. Now the longer the distance the more strength you may need to work, mainly to also develop muscle endurance. In this case we have a strength coach that can guide you through your strength training if needed.
Tempo, LT, and sustained efforts: Sustained high-intensity efforts are key, to improving your efficiency and also getting used to running at a “race pace” during training. The longer the race, the more “critical” these kind of sessions become, sessions of Lactate Threshold are key for that. The idea here is to do repeats of between 5 and 10 minutes, sometimes even 15 or 20 minutes for more advanced runners, at a very controlled effort. This should feel like your 1h pace, meaning, a pace or effort that you can hold for 1h. Some classic sessions here are 6 by 5 minutes, on a flat, uphill, or rolling terrain. For Desert Rats, since we’re talking about a runnable race, doing them on an incline of 10 to 12% or a flat surface will be perfect. The idea is that you are running just at your LT, before going into the red… and that you maintain that effort for the length of the repeat. Then recover for ½ of the time of the duration of the repeat, and go again. This is also a fantastic session to practice fueling because the effort will be similar to your race effort.
Endurance sessions: Endurance is awesome! Running easy, but running forever, that’s what we all want to achieve. Endurance sessions can be a 1h easy run the day after a hard workout, or your 3 or even 4 hours long run on the weekend. This is all about time-on-feet and clocking hours. To tolerate the volume, strength is key, that’s why is earlier on this list, but without our long runs, it would become very hard to achieve our goals. The idea is always to keep the pace easy, and sustainable, maybe add some acceleration here and there. And you can distribute these sessions to have a different focus. For example, one weekend your long run can be focused on uphill strength, so you put the focus on running with more “effort” on the climbs, and the next weekend you do it on the downhills, and so on. This is also great for working on your race fueling, nutrition, and gear testing. For Desert Rats 50k, I recommend you to build up your long runs from 90’ on week one, to 4 or 4.5 hours for the higher training load weeks of your training block (normally 3 weeks before race day). That plus the other sessions of your week, will certainly prepare you to not only finish your 48k race, but to finish strong on that massive climb and downhill.
Recovery: Eating well, and sleeping well… that’s the key to recovery. Remember, every hard effort must be balanced with recovery and resting time. In vert, we love to say #Resting Is Training. Because is true, if you don’t rest, you won’t assimilate the training that you have done, so allow yourself to have at least 1 day off every week. Make sure to eat well before, during, and after your runs and then you can always add some foam rolling sessions like this one. I’m personally a fan of foam rolling!
Nutrition and fueling: We didn’t touch much on this in our T21 overview, but it’s fundamental as the race gets longer. Practice your fueling and hydration at race pace, Try to hit the amounts of carbs that you’re planning on eating during the race. It can be 60 gr/h or 80, or 100, it doesn’t matter, what really matter is what works for you and the only way to discover that is by trying and training your gut! So be consistent and train your fueling in race.
Similarly to our 21km guide, we already have 5 out of 7 days filled up. Now, how to structure your week? Well, try to not put hard sessions back to back, So your speed or high-intensity session should not be next to each other or just before a long challenging run. Every hard session (short or long) should be followed by an easy, short-endurance day, or recovery session. Try to build up the weeks by increasing the training load or training volume weekly, maybe a 10% is already great. So if Week one you ran 4h, week 2 you should try to hit 4.5h for example. And so on. Of course add weeks of lower training load, maybe once every 4 weeks, to recovery and assimilate the training you’ve doing. You don’t want to be increasing week after week for ever. You need to have breaks in between. The beauty of having a coach is that this is done for you, and updated weekly.
100km:
102 km, with 2,050 meters of elevation gain, so a Mountain Index of 21 (the same index than our 50k). That means that on average you will climb 21 meters per km. This is a key metric we use in Vert to guide the training of our athletes, trying to replicate racing conditions while training all over the world.
You have up to 20 hours to achieve this distance, which I know you can do. This distance is extremely scenic.
The race starts with a massive climb, and downhill, within the first 10k you will have already achieved almost 30% of the race elevation gain. After this first check point, on km 8.9 you will be going trough a constant of ups and downs. Small climbs of 30, 50, 100 meters of elevation gain, that will be certainly very challenging. It does beat your legs up. The good thing is that the climbs are steep but the downhills seem to be very runnable.
The last 20k, are actually vert challenging, you have a consistent climb starting on km80, to then finish with a few ups and downs that will certainly beat you up.
One of the crazies thing about this race, is that the cutoff time is only 20 hours, that’s 10 hours less than the same distance for the Desert Rats 100km. Considering that Desert Rats happens in altitude and on trails that are not less technical and that are at altitude.
Here are key elements that your training must have, every week:
Speed and power: Similarly than in our 21km and 50km speed block description. Speed is one of the easiest things to work.. You want to develop the capacity to run at a good pace (speed is very personal and relative to the individual) without spending much energy and without fatiguing your muscles too much. Some of the best ways to work on this are simple workouts like Strides (here’s a guide on how to do them) or workouts a little more complex like 400 to 1,000-meter repeats. I recommend you start with some strides sessions during the first 2 weeks of your training block. Start with a warm-up of 20 to 30 minutes and then do 6 to 10 strides, of 30 seconds per stride. Always recover at least 2x the duration of the Stride. A session like this will help you work on your running economy and speed before jumping into more complex and demanding workouts. After a couple of weeks of Strides (don’t do them every day, 2 to 3 times a week is more than enough). You can transition into more speed-based workouts like the ones in our Speed Training plan by Grayson Murphy. Some examples are 4 to 6 by 400 meters repeats (to start) that then can evolve to 8, 10 by that distance. Or classic ladder workouts like 4km hard, 1km recovery, 3km hard, 1km recovery, 2km hard, 1 km recover, 1km hard, 500m recovery, 500 m hard. You can do this set, one time on your first speed session and then after a couple of times doing it (once a week max) you can increase to do 2 sets per session, towards the end of your training block. Now, the shorter the interval, the harder you can run, but the more fatigued you will be, so it’s a fantastic way to work on your speed and fatigue. Remember. Please keep in mind, that 2 times that set is adding to 21km of pure effort, in one session. This is a very hard session, that ideally should be guided by a coach. Don’t risk too much, you can also do just 1 set and you will be fine.
Strength: Running fast and for a while (maybe even 30 hours? ) doesn’t only depend on speed workouts, you need to have strong legs and core. First to not get injured and second to generate the power you need to run hard. 2 Strength sessions a week are a must. But hey, they don’t have to be 1h long. In vert.run we know that our customers are busy, so we have developed great follow-along strength and conditioning training routines that are not longer than 5 minutes. So in a 15-minute session, you can already work on your strength, core, and mobility. Just try to hit the basics and engage the key muscle groups you use during your running. And yeah, this will help you cover the basics for a 102 km race. Now the longer the distance the more strength you may need to work, mainly to also develop muscle endurance which is the capacity to run up, down, flat, for a long time without cramping or falling into pieces. In this case we have a strength coach that can guide you through your strength training if needed.
Tempo, LT, and sustained efforts: Sustained high-intensity efforts are key, to improving your efficiency and also getting used to running at a “race pace” during training. The longer the race, the moret “critical” these kind of sessions become, sessions of Lactate Threshold are key for that. The idea here is to do repeats of between 5 and 10 minutes, sometimes even 15 or 20 minutes for more advanced runners, at a very controlled effort. This should feel like your 1h pace, meaning, a pace or effort that you can hold for 1h. Some classic sessions here are 6 by 5 minutes, on a flat, uphill, or rolling terrain. For Desert Rats, since we’re talking about a runnable race, doing them on an incline of 10% to 12% or a flat surface will be perfect. The idea is that you are running at your LT, before going into the red… and that you maintain that effort for the length of the repeat. Then recover for ½ of the time of the duration of the repeat, and go again. This is also a fantastic session to practice fueling because the effort will be similar to your race effort. During a 102km race preparation, we would like for you to achieve up to 50 or 60 minutes of work at LT in one session. That’s equivalent to 6 by 10 minutes tempo. Now, again, this is A LOT of work and load on your body, and you have to build up towards it, it may take a few weeks to get there or maybe you won’t be able to get there, and that’s fine.
Endurance sessions: Endurance is awesome! Running is easy, but running forever, that’s what we all want to achieve. Endurance sessions can be a 1h easy run the day after a hard workout, or your 5 or even 6 hours long run on the weekend. This is all about time-on-feet and clocking hours. To tolerate the volume, strength is key, that’s why it’s earlier on this list. Without our long runs, it would become very hard to achieve our goals. The idea is always to keep the pace easy, and sustainable, maybe add some acceleration here and there. And you can distribute these sessions to have a different focus. For example, one weekend your long run can be focused on uphill strength, so you put the focus on running with more “effort” on the climbs, and the next weekend you do it on the downhills, and so on. This is also great for working on your race fueling, nutrition, and gear testing. For T102, I recommend you to build up your long runs from 120’ on week one, to 5 or 6 hours for the higher training load weeks of your training block (normally 3 weeks before race day). That plus the other sessions of your week, will certainly prepare you to not only finish T102, but to finish strong on these last 7km. Keep in mind, the longer the race, the more endurance you will need to develop and ideally the more time-on-feet you should have. Now, if for you is hard to run so much, that’s ok, we can use cross training as a great tool to add time to your training without risking an injury. You can even divide your 6h long run on a 3h ride and 3h run for example. Reducing the load impact on your body, but getting the work done.
Recovery: Eating well, and sleeping well… that’s the key to recovery. Remember, every hard effort must be balanced with recovery and resting time. In vert, we love to say #Resting Is Training. Because is true, if you don’t rest, you won’t assimilate the training that you have done, so allow yourself to have at least 1 day off every week. Make sure to eat well before, during, and after your runs and then you can always add some foam rolling sessions like this one. I’m personally a fan of foam rolling!
Nutrition and fueling: We didn’t touch much on this in our T21 overview, but it’s fundamental as the race gets longer. Practice your fueling and hydration at race pace, Try to hit the amounts of carbs that you’re planning on eating during the race. It can be 60 gr/h or 80, or 100, it doesn’t matter, what really matter is what works for you and the only way to discover that is by trying and training your gut! So be consistent and train your fueling in race.
Similarly to our our two previous distances, we already have 5 out of 7 days filled up. Now, how to structure your week? Well, try to not put hard sessions back to back, So your speed or high-intensity session should not be next to each other or just before a long challenging run. Every hard session (short or long) should be followed by an easy, short-endurance day, or recovery session. Try to build up the weeks by increasing the training load or training volume weekly, maybe a 10% is already great. So if Week one you ran 4h, week 2 you should try to hit 4.5h for example. And so on. Of course add weeks of lower training load, maybe once every 4 weeks, to recovery and assimilate the training you’ve doing. You don’t want to be increasing week after week for ever. You need to have breaks in between.
At the same time, it’s very beneficial to have a couple of back to back weekends, where you do two long runs back to back, for example a 4h run followed by a 3hours one the next day. Just make sure to be ready for them, and to recover well after those hard weekends. The beauty of having a coach is that this is done for you, and updated weekly.
Taper and recovery for an your race in Desert Rats.
When all the work is done, it’s time to recover and to respect yourself for all the prep work you’ve done. Always keep in mind that even if the race day goes horribly or differently than you’d hoped, that you’ve done all of this incredibly tough physical and mental work and had all those adventurous days out. Nobody can take that away from you, so make sure that you enjoy the preparation process, because your enjoyment is what matters in the end.
For tapering, I recommend doing so for two weeks. You won’t lose fitness, and you’ll gain both energy and time.
The first week of tapering for a trail race:
Should be a volume of about 70 to 75% of your normal training. So, if you train 9 hours per week, feel free to train between 6 and 7 hours during your first taper week. If you feel really tired, you can go down to 4 hours–this might also help you to recover better if it’s what your body is asking for. Different people need different tapers, but it’s really important to keep in mind that rest and recovery is part of the training. It’s way better to arrive to your race 20% under- trained than to arrive 1% over-trained. Believe me, in the latter case, you’ll definitely feel the brunt of that 1% on race day.
Your second week of tapering:
should be between 20-40% of your normal training, so in the example of a 9-hour training week, you’d cut down to 2-3 hours max. And, divide these hours into short runs.
An ideal taper week for a Saturday race day would be:
- Monday: rest day
- Tuesday: 30 to 45 minutes easy run + 4-6 strides of 20 seconds each at 80% of your max speed
- Wednesday: rest day
- Thursday: 30 to 45 minutes easy run
- Friday: 20 to 40 minutes easy run + 3 strides of 10 seconds each, or full rest
- Saturday: Race day
(Want to take the guesswork out of training for your first 50k Ultramarathon? Try our popular 12 week 50k training plan “Become an Ultrarunner” and let us take on the logistics so that you can focus on the part that matters most–enjoying the trails.)
Tapering is not a magic wand, but it is important. Plus, now that you’re training less, you’ll find yourself with so much free time. What will you do with all this time on your hands, if you don’t plan in advance? You’ll probably feel worried about the race, so it’s good to take advantage of all this free time to deal with race logistics, enjoy your extra time with family and friends, and–most importantly–sleep, sleep and more sleep. Sleep in, sleep early, sleep as much as you can.
Extra Food and fueling tips.
Check out our Nutrition guide for Ultra runners designed by our friends at On Pace Wellness.
While counting calories may seem like a thing of the 90’s, having a general idea of how much food you should be taking in while training is probably a good idea. This can help prevent under-eating (or under-fueling) during your training program.
Read our article about Keto diets and Ultramarathons:
“Can you run an Ultramarathon on a ketogenic diet”
By no means do we endorse (or not endorse!) a diet–each person has different needs, and a different diet that works for them. But’s cool to see what things and options are out there. Here’s some info from our latest article about keto diets and Ultrarunning:
Is a Ketogenic diet a competitive advantage or disadvantage for Ultramarathons?
That’s a hard question and there’s not one answer fits all here. Of course, some athletes do amazingly well on ketogenic diets and others on non-ketogenic diets, like we mentioned at the beginning. There is no miracle when talking about diets.
If you see it from an adaptation point of view, it can be a huge disadvantage. Imagine you’re in the middle of an Ultramarathon and you run out of your keto products and have carbs available to fuel yourself. Your whole thing will just not work. What would you do then? Based on experience, you should be able to be adaptable and to perform using whatever is available, so actually if you’re very efficient using fat as fuel and carbs as fuel you’ll have all the advantages and you will probably be a stronger runner.
So technically we can’t say being on a keto diet will give you a clear advantage from people who are not, but definitely being more fat adapted can be helpful in an Ultra.
Race Day:
It’s time to toe the start line: but don’t worry, you’ve done all the work, and now it’s time to enjoy it.
It’s normal to feel nervous before the race–no matter how many times we’ve raced, almost all of us feel some type of anxiety beforehand. That’s why we wrote a specific article about this.
“We’ve all been there: it’s the night before a race, and your brain will. Not. Let. You. Sleep. Maybe it’s your first race (or your fiftieth) and you’re feeling wired–but not in the good way. Your nerves just won’t let you sleep. I myself have had so many of these nights before important races: my body (or, my anxious brain, I guess) wakes me up at 2:00 am, or maybe 4:00 am, and refuses to let me get any more precious shut-eye. So, I toe the starting line with just a couple of hours of sleep under my belt.
Check out our “how to calm race-day nerves” article for some more in-depth discussion about keeping cool before your race.
We wish you the best of luck on your race, and who knows? Maybe we’ll run into each other, either at this race or the next.
