It is filled with good advice. If you want more information take a look here.
George Beinhorn#1
I'd be extremely interested in hearing from anyone who's trained specifically for the down hills that are such a major feature of all of the great trail 100's. WS100 race director Norm Klein says 80% of the people who drop out of Western States do so because of quads trashed by the down hills.
Anstr Davidson
Based on no scientific analysis and only my own prejudices, I disagree with several comments about training for down hills. If I train at all for down hills, it is by running hard up hills. Running *hard* downhill (or bounding down stairs two or three at a time) seems to me to risk injury.
While you need a little bit of style practice in going downhill, you don't need much. I feel that all of the other stuff like weights, stairmaster, walking up stairs (and coming back down carefully), biking and the normal downhills in training prepare me for going up and down the hill. I wasn't sore at AC100 last year. (Of course, I wasn't very fast, either.)
I think that our bodies have only so many hard downhills in them.
Bob Givens
George Beinhorn inquired about training on downhills for major 100's. My comment is..."it's imperative." Norm Klein is right. Every time I have done WS, it's amazing how many people I pass the last 20 miles, that are walking because their quads have given out. The last 20 miles is my strongest part of the race. I am fortunate that I have great training grounds for that. Part of the descent into our Palo Duro Canyon here has a mile & quarter descent at 10% grade. Repeats....repeats...repeats until I drop. Due to that, I have never, ever, even been stiff in the quads after a major race, including 100's. I am also a firm believer in getting on the ole Stairmaster... I think that helps, also.
Now, if I could just run UP those hills, maybe I could do better.
Ed Furtaw
Matt, You said:
"But around here, I have to do my downhill training on a concrete bridge. Sigh... :-( "
Have you considered doing some training on stairs in a tall building? That would probably be good training for racing on steep uphills and downhills, such as at Barkley. Plus you would simulate the
