There is a strong correlation between purpose and success that I have been privy to witness throughout my coaching career. Those athletes motivated by an internal fire, rather than shiny belt buckles, are ironically more...
Articles by Jason Koop
Many of you are likely deep in the throes of finding various ways to improve your ultramarathon performance. Certainly, the pages of this magazine (including the one you are currently on) are filled with all ma...
While summer is gone and the days are getting shorter, it’s never a bad time to think about your next ultra adventure run. After all, you are an endurance athlete. And I bet more than a few nickels tha...
This month’s issue is filled with racing opportunities galore. Stories of the triumphant elite and gritty, everyday athletes combined with majestic imagery of our outdoor playground makes for a potent elixir intoxicating...
I ran my first marathon when I was 13. At the time, I thought it was somewhat of a novelty. I knew few people my age that would run such a feat. And like all teenagers, I succumbed to the scope of my own neighborhood...
Sometimes just finding where to run can be a chore. The mental ping-pong game between doing something easy or designing an elaborate route can derail even the best intended ultrarunners. Over the course of my running...
As a coach, I have an unlimited number of ways I can manipulate workouts. The volume of time, number of miles, vertical gain, surface of the trail, workout frequency, training mode (running vs. cycling...
When I look back at a year’s worth of training and racing for any athlete, inevitably, one common theme emerges. The athletes who reaped the most success during the year were also the athletes that planned out their t...
One of the inherent problems of being a coach to both normal and elite athletes is that the former group always wants to copy the latter. Particularly in today’s world of Strava and publicly available training informa...
Ultrarunning is at a crossroads. We continue to see growth in participation, race size and format, new players entering the space and more elite runners competing at the biggest races. This growth and development are pri...
If we’ve seen anything from the spring this year, it’s clear that races are returning. Runners are waiting and race directors are busy making all manners of virtual race briefings, socially distanced check-ins and con...
As summer heats up and the pandemic winds down, many ultrarunners are eager to put in some big miles of training in preparation for the backlog of events. We will stack up big training weekends, cajole our trainin...
Let’s face it, as everyday runners we love the prospect of living like an elite athlete. They have all day to train and endless amounts of time to explore the outdoors. With seemingly no responsibilities other than ru...
Ultrarunners are motivated athletes. We meticulously track miles, time, intensity, amount of vertical gain, calories consumed on the run and a host of other variables that we find meaningful to performance. Most of th...
Let’s face it, the days are getting shorter and colder. Runners everywhere are digging out their headlamps from the far corners of their gear bins. We search for the rechargeable battery pack and then the...
There’s an old adage that goes, “Adversity does not build character, it reveals it.” In this year of a global pandemic, raging wildfires and political and racial unrest, we are seeing this statement come to life in many...
As athletes are pivoting towards personal projects, virtual races, Fastest Known Times (FKTs) and (virtual) last person standing events, I’ve had to pivot what I do as a coach to help athletes meet these demands. In my h...
When I first started coaching in 2001, I killed a lot of trees. Throughout the course of a workday, I received numerous faxes and e-mail attachments of training files from my athletes. I printed out every single one of t...
Let’s face it, most of us have zero clue what will happen on the racing front over the next several months. Some races are kicking their cans down the road, hoping for a celestial epiphany when the stars of physical dist...
Pop quiz: What do all of the following things have in common?The first woman to run a marathonA burro trail constructed in 1914“America the Beautiful”A $60 million tourist attractionOne of the most iconic trail marathons...