Taking risks is uncomfortable for most of us, and everyone has a different risk tolerance. Still, it can lead to growth in the sport of ultrarunning and in other areas of life. Discerning your risk tolerance level is a good first step, as well as deciding what your desired outcome(s) are before taking on challenges. Without a trail map, you’re more likely to wander around and find yourself lost. What exactly would risk-taking look like for a trail or ultrarunner? Let’s narrow it down to three categories: training, events and cross-training.
Plenty of athletes, both veterans and those newer to the sport, may not be aware of their limits when it comes to effort. Specifically, they’re not quite sure how hard they can run for, say, 5 minutes, 20 minutes or even an hour. Our sport, by nature, rewards patience and usually being conservative with pace—at least on race day. But in training, why not find out where your limit is for various durations and/or distances? If you go out, be sure to set yourself up for success so you’ll get an accurate gauge. You should be well-rested, execute your effort on a well-known course, warm up and be ready to give a 110% effort. Also, be willing to fail. Yep, that’s exactly how you find your limit. While not every athlete needs to fail, as in sprinting out of the gate the first 30 seconds and imploding within the first 3 minutes, faltering and fading markedly in the last 5–10% of the duration of your effort can be a sign that you did, in fact, find that limit. Once an athlete knows where this limit is, there can be more latitude to play with a wider range of efforts on hard training days.
Beyond effort, nutrition can be an opportunity to grow through risk-taking. If you’re one that knows you can fuel well for something like a 50k on liquid calories and gels, try a long run in which you fuel exclusively on real food and not manufactured sports nutrition. Do the math ahead of time, ensuring that you’ll still meet your requirements for calories, liquids and sodium, ideally per hour. Then find out how your stomach and energy react to moving away from liquid calories. Or, vice versa—you could try fueling exclusively on more digestible calories for a long run or two. In the end, you might realize that you have more calorie options for your next event by going out of your comfort zone in the nutrition department.
One very effective way to realize growth as a trail and ultrarunner is to assess your relative strengths and weaknesses and map out a plan for enhancing those strengths. If you’re a great technical descender but lack pure speed on flat sections, maybe begin with making your downhill skills even more robust for a few weeks. This way you can build momentum by seeing improvements in something that you’re already adequately doing. Take that momentum and tackle some flatter runs. Start slowly, as major changes to the grades you’re used to running takes weeks or even months to fully adapt to. But you may be able to sprinkle in some longer sections of flat terrain, complete a few strides, throughout some of your weekly runs and start to build your mechanical ability to handle moving faster on flat grades. With patience and work, there’s a good chance that you’ll feel those flat miles coming more easily and likely end up becoming a more well-rounded trail runner.
If you’ve participated in at least a handful of trail and ultrarunning events, you have a good idea of what you like and what suits you best. Try signing up for an event that doesn’t play to your preferences or strengths. Maybe your trail experience is mostly limited to a towpath trail. Try signing up for an event exclusively on singletrack with moderate elevation gain and loss. Or join a local trail running organization that will introduce you to trails that may have been historically intimidating to you for one reason or another. This is a way to slowly become more familiar and comfortable on challenging terrain. If you’ve only ever done long runs by making loops short enough to use the trailhead and your car as an aid station, try plotting a long loop that will have you filtering water and carrying the gear and supplies you’ll need to be independent for many hours at a time, even longer than you would go between aid stations in a typical ultramarathon. While it may not be advisable to jump from shorter trail events right into a sky race or a self-supported 100-mile event, slowly adding bits of challenge that feel risky and uncomfortable will probably lead to being more comfortable in a wider variety of situations in the long run.
Lastly, try your hand at cross-training. For most runners, sustaining a chronic and/or acute injury is all but inevitable. If you’ve invested a little time, and maybe even a professional course or lesson in a non-running activity, it will be there for you if you need to take a day or longer away from running. Many trail and ultrarunners use cycling, in its various forms, as a means of cardiovascular training. If you live in a climate that provides snow in the winter, consider learning to Nordic ski. Classic Nordic skiing is very similar to the mechanics of running, while skate skiing can be a terrific cardiovascular training opportunity. Swimming is another low impact and full body option. Lastly, most athletes of all types, including runners, will arguably benefit from resistance training. If you’ve dabbled in one or more of these, it will be a much more seamless transition to relying on them if you find yourself unwillingly sidelined.
It might be humbling to fumble when trying something you’re unsure of. We like our practiced routines because they are familiar, require little-to-no thought and we know they work. But, if we stay within our predictable patterns, there is a good chance we’re allowing growth opportunities to pass us by. I think most of us want to look back a decade or two from now and see that we challenged ourselves. Again, the idea is to take a risk, feel awkward and a little bit scared to expand one’s capabilities.