r/evokeendurance

Hi Scott/Evoke Team,

What are your thoughts on the role of plyometrics in training for long-distance ultras?

Specifically, extensive high-rep type plyometrics like hopping, pogos, bounds & reactive movements designed to build tendon stiffness and tissue resilience.

The gym-based muscular endurance workout from the Training for the UpHill Athlete book features many deep tier style plyometric movements and I have heard Scott reference Verkhoshansky many times but I have never heard him speak on plyometrics specifically or its application in his training programs.

Plyometrics play a huge role in the road running and track space, but I rarely see ultra endurance athletes experimenting with this type of training.

I would be interested to know your take and if you think it is a beneficial addition to a trail running training programme and if you think it would help with injury prevention etc. :)

Thanks in advance!

Charley

Good Day all.

I have a 4 month transition period into the start of my Evoke First Ultra 20 week 50 km plan (7 Sept), and have been going for 9 weeks just building AeT along with strength workouts.

By the time 7 September comes around, my weekly volume will be above that which is in the plan and was wondering if it would be ok to just continue by adjusting my volume (with increases) to the weekly percentages for aerobic base only, but sticking to the program times for the zone 3 and up workouts?

I am training for my first 55km ultra 24 Jan '27 next year, but have an opportunity to do another on 11 Dec '26, about a month and a half earlier.

The earlier run has the option of a 30 and 20 km along with the 100/50 km, and I was wondering if as a newbie the 30 km was maybe a better fit for my first ever race, with sufficient time before the next longer race.

From earlier posts I gather I would set the end date for my Evoke first ultra 50km on the 30 km race, and then again on the 55km race date on TP.

As someone who has overtrained in the past I still struggle with recovery. Or the understanding of when to train. I hate posting these questions because I'm not great at articulating what I'm thinking but here goes. When you look graph in a pill athlete about training recovery and overtraining it shows the periods of super compensation and fatigue. I guess what I don't understand is if I do a workout on Monday how do I know when I'm ready to train again. If the premise is we should always have a small amount of fatigue forcing ever more slightly amounts of stress on the body so that it adapts how do you know what's appropriate timing. I feel like with my body I can train on a Monday and do recovery run Tuesday Wednesday still feel like a pile of garbage and be worried about overtraining but then Thursday I'm feeling 100% recovered and no fatigue. I'm then left worrying now that I'm not getting any training effect because I'm letting too much time go between efforts. Hopefully this question makes sense???? In the past I've always just grinded myself into a pile of garbage with tons of high intensity so I was always super tired now I'm worried I'm actually not training enough.

I’m currently in the painfully slow running period. I did not experience this when I first read TfNA and TfUA 5 and 10 years ago and started trying to train this way.

4 years ago I started having some knee trouble, and running fell of in favor of skiing hiking and biking. now I’ve have two spine surgeries in the last 2 years and am clawing my way back slowly.

I just moved past run/walk intervals and into 20+ minute runs, with the rest of my base training walking or on a bike. on flat pavement my AeT pace seems to be around 13:30 per mile. it’s running but barely!! I’m seeing solid progress and I know this works, but you know, it’s slow

Side note I’m using Suunto Zonesense and really happy with it. it’s in the same ballpark as drift testing, with some changes that seem to make sense when I’m tired. it’s also nice since I’m doing 3 or more sports all the time to not feel like I need to test constantly for all to sports.

TLDR: Running this slow is hard, but I know it will pay off.

Did a drift test yesterday on the treadmill. I'm not a treadmill runner, so really not much idea where I should've been on speed. Inside/outside efforts feel completely different to me.

I spent most of the 15min warm up trying to figure out where the "sweet spot" was. I finally settled in to a speed with about 2-3min left of the warm up. Until then, heart rate would bump up a bit initially, then back down. In hindsight I should've probably paused the watch and warmed up a bit more at that speed that felt "right".

If I run my drift test from 15:00-45:00| 45:01-1:15:00 I have a difference of 6.2%. If I look at the data from 20:00-47:30|47:31-1:15:00 it settles in at 4.65%.

I've got no issue redoing the drift test, but I feel like maybe only having 2-3min at the test speed during warm up, didn't actually get my aerobic system where it needed to be. It seemed to jump a bit from 13:00-18:00 then somewhat level off until later in the test.

Thoughts?