 I can't remember when I first heard about UTMB. It must have been at least 10 years ago when I started my ultra-running journey and somebody must have said to me, have you ever done UTMB or are you going to do UTMB? And from that moment the idea of this iconic race in the French Alps and the Swiss Alps and the Italian Alps has captivated me. And I did my first UTMB race in 2018 and I'll link it up there. It's the CCC race. If you don't know about UTMB, let me explain a bit about what it is. See UTMB isn't just one race, it's a whole series of races in the UTMB running week festival that happens at the end of August each year. The main races are the OCC, which is 56 kilometers. The CCC, which is just over 100 kilometers, and the main UTMB race itself, which is 170 kilometers, well over 100 miles. And those three races make up the World Series. There are other races as well in UTMB. There are some shorter races. There's one called TDS, which I'm sure you know if you watched the channel I did last year, which is well it was almost 100 miles. And then there's a much longer one called PTL. But the main three are those OCC, CCC and UTMB. Now if you live in Europe, chances are that UTMB will be the pinnacle of your ultra running career. If you're just getting into ultra running, then that's the thing that many people aspire to go to. If you're in the States, you might argue you want to do Western States because that is the oldest 100 mile race in the world. And that would be the pinnacle of an ultra running career for many people as well. But the UTMB races are not easy. You do have to qualify by doing other events to prove that you are capable of taking part in the UTMB races. And even then there's no guarantee that you'll complete them. I've been out to Chamonix four times now. The first time was to complete the CCC race in 2018. And then I've had three attempts at TDS finishing on the third attempt. But we go back every year because Chamonix is so beautiful and during UTMB week it's alive with activities. So exciting to be there and the races are stunning in the most beautiful locations, fabulous views and just the most amazing experience. But UTMB isn't for everyone and there are a couple of downsides to the whole thing. Firstly, UTMB is really busy. The week itself the races are absolutely crammed full of people and that may not be for you. A lot of people's idea of trail running and ultra running is to get out on the hills alone and enjoy the solitude and the silence. If that's you then maybe UTMB isn't for you. The other thing is that maybe UTMB are known for being a bit of an aggressive organisation in terms of monopolising the sport. So they do swoop in and take over races that they like to make them one of their branded races. I said before that you have to qualify and you have to qualify by taking part in one of UTMB's own qualification races and they have them all over the world and you collect running stones. The problem is of course that means that you're tied in to the UTMB ecosystem. But to some degree that is business. Race directors have successful races. You don't have to sell your race to UTMB and cash in and runners you don't have to pay UTMB's huge prices to go and run around Mont Blanc. A flight to Geneva isn't that expensive and you can go and hike or run around the TMB route without any problem at all. And of course I'm sure there are plenty of beautiful trails near where you live which you can go and enjoy every day. So this year we are back in Chamonix and I am running the full 170 kilometre UTMB main race that is a full circumnavigation of Mont Blanc from Chamonix all the way around and back to Chamonix. So that's what this training series is all about. We are on week two of training for UTMB. So I'm going to take you through all the sessions I did last week in week two. Before that though if you're enjoying the video please do subscribe to the channel and if you're interested in getting a treadmill because you know I do a lot of my sessions on the treadmill I'm wearing my noble pro top today. There is a link down below to buy yourself a noble pro treadmill with a discount with my code in the description below so go and check that out. So it was another 100 kilometre week we just managed to squeeze in 100 kilometres with a bit of cramming at the end of the week. All in it was about 57 kilometres on the treadmill and 44 or so outdoors. So we started bright and early on Monday morning last week with 10k here on the seafront in Worthing recording the first episode of the UTMB training series videos. Monday evening we were on the treadmill we did 10k on Zwift in the community run nice and easy low heart rate so all in 20k on Monday mostly zones one and two. Now because I'm training for a race in the mountains it makes sense to do some elevation so Tuesday morning on the treadmill with the treadmill at 12% incline we climbed 500 metres in the film my run 500. Tuesday evening we were back on the treadmill again on Zwift six kilometres nice and easy and that made around about 10 kilometres for the day so 30 kilometres in total for the week so far. So if you saw the first video in the series you'll know that Wednesday is my interval session on the treadmill we do the same session every week it's 600 metres just above threshold pace and 400 metres just below threshold pace for 10 kilometres so that's what we did on Wednesday. Thursday morning we were back on the treadmill climbing 500 metres at 12% incline on Zwift Thursday evening we were back on the treadmill yet again for another session on Zwift only did just over 5k this time and a total of about 50k for the week so far and we finished off the working week with 10k on Zwift on Friday evening so that made a total of around 60k from Monday to Friday with one hard interval session on Wednesday normally on a Saturday morning I would be out doing park run however I've been trying to fit in a hill rep session and I hadn't had a chance all week so Saturday morning I did a short outside hill rep session the problem with doing hill reps on the treadmill is that you don't get the downhills and as I've said before and I'll say it again the downhills is what will kill your quadriceps and stop you running on the UTMB races so when you're doing training for hill work you need to do the downhills as well so I got outside and did a hill rep session on Saturday morning Saturday afternoon's run was a bit annoying we were in Crawley because my son Ellis was doing a track race there so I thought I'd go and have a little jog around Tillgate Park Tillgate Forest and I I put a map on my watch and tried to follow it but it was far too small to see I don't know why I never had problems with maps and navigation before but for this run for some reason I just couldn't see the route I was supposed to be doing so it was a bit of a mishmash rubbish run really but we did 6-7k in Tillgate Forest on Saturday afternoon and then on Sunday I was racing we went to Southampton to run the Lord Till 10k of all things it was great lots of fun I've done it twice before and I was invited to come and run it again I took my camera along so there will be a film of the Lord Till 10k coming out soon but yeah that was good fun and a hard effort as well didn't get under sub 40 tried hard but I'm nowhere near fit enough yet to get under 40 minutes so it was about 42 minutes for 10k but that wasn't the end of the running because we were on 94 kilometers so I had to get on the treadmill because there's a bit of OCD there and I had to get up to 100k so I did about 101 kilometers 6k on the treadmill on Sunday evening so because I'm training for a mountain race I'm supposed to be focusing more in this training block on elevation gain than speed but it hasn't really worked out that well this week I've only done about 1300 meters of elevation gain it's about four and a half thousand feet of gain so a bit of speed work and a little bit of elevation work this week maybe we need to increase that elevation work for next week I do have two races next week they're club races though and thankfully they are trail races as well so it does mean that during those races I will get some elevation gain in and we're sticking with 100k again next week week number three we'll do 100 kilometers and I'll try and get over 2000 meters of elevation gain in so thank you very much for watching if you've enjoyed the video please do subscribe to the channel if you want to catch up on the first of this training series then watch that link right there and we'll see you on the start line next time take care everyone bye bye