How do you train to finish top 10 at Cocodona 250?
An overview of one of my remote athletes training build in the lead up to her 200+ mile debut
I coach a lot of savage humans chasing absurd objectives.
Bailey is a prime example of one of these people.
After a great 100 debut at Javelina last year, where she finished sub 21 hours, she set her eyes on the world of the 200+ mile outings and jumped in the wait list for Cocodona 250, got in and demolished it.
In the immediate aftermath of big races like this, I know there’s a lot of people putting eyes on potentially running a 200+ miler in the future when hype is high. The conversation of “how do you train for something like this” pops up a fair amount, and with her cracking the top 10 on the women’s side of things at this years 250 and top 35 overall, I thought I’d share a zoomed out version of what her training build looked like, so you could see a real world example of what a successful build can look like for a race like Cocodona.
For perspective, she is not a “professional runner”. She works a demanding, shift work based job, has a normal life and balances training with many of the regular variables us normal folks deal with. I think that’s an important thing to say out loud, because often we only see examples of what works for the “pros” or “elites” who run and train as their primary job.
We had eyes on Cocodona ever since she got on the waitlist, but weren’t sure she’d get in, so in the 4-6 weeks leading up to her getting in off the waitlist, we kept a fairly manageable weekly mileage load of 40-55, hit the gym work pretty hard and kind of idled until we knew she was in for the race. Even though we were pretty sure she would get off the waitlist, there wasn’t a point in cranking miles up too far out as we knew there would be substantial work ahead.
At 10 weeks out, she was in, and so we dove into our build. The objective was to spend 3 weeks of a fairly aggressive build before peaking in a singular, large effort peak week with a big B2B2B effort. She lives near terrain, so we were able to get a fair amount of up/down without too much extra effort and through the first 3 weeks and the last 3 weeks of this build, we generally kept 2-3 strength days a week on the schedule.
Her peak week consisted of a big back to back to back effort, 15 miles, 40 miles and 18 over a Friday/Saturday/Sunday.
We peaked her out at 5 weeks with the idea being that if we had any major issues with fueling etc, we still had 3ish weeks to figure it out (thankfully it all went well) before we started tapering down.
As you can see below, both the mileage and vertical generally built up progressively, peaked, then dropped down, with the last 2 weeks being very friendly in comparison to the primary build.
Her build break down:
9 weeks out- 71 miles, 11,000ft of gain
8 weeks out- 90 miles, 12,000ft of gain
7 weeks out- 101 miles, 13,000ft of gain
6 weeks out-118 miles, 20,400ft of gain
5 weeks out- 100 miles, 13,900ft of gain
4 weeks out-90 miles, 8,000ft of gain
3 weeks out- 66 miles, 10,600ft of gain
2 weeks out-55 miles, 1,700ft of gain
Taper week- 25 miles, 1,300ft of gain
The 9 week build was some hard work and is a huge example of why I’m such a proponent of keeping off-build weekly mileage much lower. None of these weeks felt harder for her than they should, even though she doesn’t live at 70-100 mpw during her off season like many folks do. She was fresh, mentally sharp and generally held together body and mind really well in the 9 week block. I used a very similair plan for another athlete who finished Moab 240 earlier in the year, with the same lower mileage, heavy on the strength training, idea built into his down periods of the year.
There isn’t a one size fits all training plan for this kind of distance and even what I’ve outlined here is just what worked for one person. However, seeing what has worked for people, can help you decide 1) if this type of race is something you want to prepare for and 2) what approach you want to take in your training for it. The training is just one aspect to a 200+ mile objective, with endless logistics like sleep, fueling, support, pacing and more all equally as critical as having the legs to cover the distance.
Super fucking proud of this killer and excited to see the next big endeavor she takes on (Mammoth 200) go down.
Onward, Always.