Training for Mt Buffalo 

The Mt Buffalo Ultra 75km was going to be my first race for an entire year. Due to a rocky 2018, and DNFing in the 2018 iteration of the race with barely 10km to go, success at this race was going to be hugely important for me.

In 2018, my training year had been a saga of disasters with injuries, combined with loosing my job and generally falling into a slump of apathy and restlessness. For most of 2018, I had been out of training which was very obvious when I began training for the 2019 Mt Buffalo. 
Mt Buffalo presents an interesting training puzzle. The race can be divided into three distinct parts. Each section is unique and comes with its own challenges that need to be accounted and trained for. 

The course is an out and back. This is both a blessing and a curse. Its a blessing because, on the way out, you become familiar with the course, meaning there wont be any surprises once the wheels come off later in the race. Its also a curse for that exact reason. If you go out too strong, and the wheels fall off too early, you know exactly how far you still have to go and exactly how hard those final KMs will be. This is a mental challenge that needs to planned for.

The race begins with two immensely steep and long climbs and descents on rocky fire-trail. The trail goes directly straight up, visiting Clearspot, before descending the legendary “Micks Track,” the steepest segment of the course that is also very eroded, crumbly and slippery. Expect to fall over several times here. I did. 

Following that, the trail climbs steeply again to Mystic and the first aid station. 

The second section, in my mind, is far more runable. It includes a long descent, followed by an undulating mix of fire-trail and road. This is a chance to open up, but also can be dangerous if hit too hard. Still plenty of climbing to go.

The third section is defined by the “Big Walk.” This is a 10km deceptively easy climb that meanders up to the top of Mt Buffalo. For me, I consider this section the crux of the race. It is very easy to underestimate this climb, attack it too hard and burn up. I passed heaps of people on this climb who thought they could easily power up it. The descent of the “Big Walk” can be just as make or break. Your legs are going to receive plenty of pounding on this section which will creep up on you on the following fast road section and defiantly on the final two climbs and steep descents heading back into Bright. 

Based on this understanding, I divided each section into three different ‘skills’ that I would need to plan for during my training. 

Section one- Training for this section needed to involve steep hiking and descending. Leg strength and climbing skill where going to integral here. 

Section two– This section required me to improve my comfort with running fast on tarmac, something I had avoided for several years. Leg turn over, but also resilience to the unique pounding of running on the road where going to be integral here.   

Section three– The third section required me to be able to move fast uphill, being able to maintain a high level of intensity for a long period of time, but also be able to bomb downhill for 10km. In this section, working on Vo2 Max would be integral.

While training for this event, I relied on the Training Essentials for Ultra-running by Jason Koop (book review coming soon). Koop’s theory revolves around developing the least essential skills first, spending more time on your weakness and prioritizing overall fitness. 

For me this meant three things.
Firstly, I planned to build and develop my hill intervals. I began by simply doing short 90sec intervals with 90secs off and slowly built up the duration to 8min climbing intervals. These workouts where aimed at building my overall fitness.

Secondly, I knew I needed to maintain a solid base of running economy to balance all the climbing I planned on doing. This simply meant ensuring that I still did some long flatter sessions which involved some road and fire-trail. These session where aimed at building on my weakness- running fast on the road.

Thirdly, because the race involved lots of hiking and lots and running, I needed to ensure that my long runs involved some of both skills. I chose to do long runs with less climbing initially, with runs that involved long run-able climbs and very long descents. Long runs such as that are particularly uncomfortable for me. Closer to the race, I did runs with more vert and more hiking knowing that climbing and hiking where my strengths and that developing my hiking skills would take the least amount of time. 

Going into the 2019 Buffalo Stampede I was feeling fresh and strong. Just how fit remained to be tested (race report coming soon). 

Jed Anderson-Habel