 100 meters of distance covered, over 2,000 meters of elevation gain, two hilly trail races and two hill rep interval sessions. And stick around because today we're going to be discussing how you can qualify for the biggest, most prestigious trail running festival in the world. Welcome to UTMB Training Week 3. As always, all my training is freely available to view on Strava. I don't hide any of my runs on Strava. The only thing that's hidden, occasionally, I'll record a walk, which you're not interested in seeing me walking. And it's not included in my weekly mileage. So everything is available on Strava. So let's start by looking back at this week's training. Still sticking to the principle that we are running most of our runs really easy. And then some of our runs hard. And around about 80, 20. But it's never exact. This week we've done more running outside than on Zwift, which is unusual. 35 kilometers on Zwift and 68 kilometers outdoors. And we started off the week pretty easy with a nice 10k low heart rate on Zwift. No elevation, nice and flat. Just 10k treadmill running. Tuesday was a really busy day. We started outside with 10k on the seafront, low heart rate nice and easy again, filming episode two of the UTMB training series. But then I hopped onto the treadmill and did the film my run 500 later in the morning, which is 500 meters of climbing at 12%. I know you may not be convinced about 80, 20 running. And you may not be convinced about treadmill running or running on Zwift. But all I can tell you is before I started doing that, before I set foot on Zwift, I had not done a sub three marathon. Now I have done with treadmill training as a large part of my training treadmill running. I have now done four sub three marathons at the age of what am I 25. So why not at least check it out. Come and have a look at the Zwift run channel. So link below. Every single Zwift training session that I do on the treadmill is broadcast live on that channel. Come and have a look at what Zwift is, what you think of it. You never know. You might like it. Wednesday was the first of my races this week. And I took part in the West Sussex Fun Run League Round Hill Romp, which is a 10k race that takes place on this very path here on the South Downsway. We climbed up a very steep hill and then come along the top of the downs here and then back down again. I did it at pretty much max effort. You can see by my heart rate here and we do these runs every year. They're really enjoyable to do. So that was my max effort for this week. Thursday we were back on the treadmill, climbing 500 meters in the morning and then a nice easy run in the evening. So that was Thursday done all on Zwift. So after the double run day on Thursday Friday was also a busy day, but not necessarily for running. I was taking my daughter to see the weekend, the weekend in London in concert. That was great. But it meant I only had time for a short hill session on Friday. I did three times up a 90 meter slope in terms of 90 meters elevation. The distance was just short of a kilometer, about 900 meters. And we did that three times, making sure on the downhill to smash my quads into the ground as much as possible. Not to get injured, but to wreck them, to trash them so that they improve in fitness, they get stronger so that when I come to the downhill in the races, my legs are less likely to get trashed earlier on in the race. Having got back very late on Friday night from the concert, I was just too tired to get up and go and do park run on Saturday morning. So just one run on Saturday afternoon. And I decided to do the hills again. So I went and did the same hill, 90 meters up, 900 meters distance, but this time I did it five times and I did it progressively. So I got faster each time. And I started the first rep by literally walking most of the way up here. Because when you're in the mountains doing a mountain race, a mountain ultra, most of the hills are so steep you are going to have to walk up them anyway. So you will be doing a lot of walking. So I started by walking, then started walk jogging. And then the last two I ran the whole thing. So that was my session on Saturday. And so we come to Sunday where I did my second West Sussex Fun Run League race of the week. This time it was the Hove Hornets Stinger, which is another hilly tough race, another 10K as well. I did a long warm-up because I really wanted to get 100K in for the week. So I did 4K of warm-up. Then we got into the race. It was hard work. I didn't do quite as well as I thought I might, but I still got round in 47 or so minutes. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, I did a recovery run of about four kilometers on the seafront, which brought a total for a week to about 103 kilometers. Mostly nice easy running, 10 runs in all. Two of those hard efforts, which were the races. Remember, we don't count the hills as hard efforts. We do them easy, relaxed heart rate. So we're just working the legs, but not the cardiovascular system so much. But more importantly, this week we've got the distance in. So we've done 2,000 meters, well, well over 2,000 meters of elevation gain. If you want that in feet, it's about 7,000 feet. So not bad for the week. We'll probably try and increase that a little bit more in the future weeks. But next week we're still on 100K, and we'll still do around about 2,000 meters for week four. This series is all about training for UTMB, a 170 kilometer race in the Alps. And last week I talked a little bit about what the UTMB festival is and what it's all about. And after that I got a lot of questions, well, how can I run UTMB? How can I get to Chamonix and take part in this amazing event? So what we're going to do now is talk a little bit about qualification for UTMB. Future Stephen here, just butting in to say, if you haven't subscribed to the Film My Run channel, I would really appreciate if you do that. We are still a relatively small channel, and it would be great to have your support. So please do click the thumbs up if you liked the video and subscribe to the channel and click the notifications bell so that you're notified every time we upload a new video. And if you want to join me on Zwift, go and click that link down below to get yourself a discount on the Noble Pro range of treadmills. My discount link is in the description. Come and join me on Zwift. Now you might think that qualification for UTMB is complicated. It really isn't as complicated as it might seem. There are only two things that you need to qualify for UTMB week. They are stones and an index performance. So forget about points. That was the old system two or three years ago. You used to have to collect points to qualify for UTMB. Points no longer exist. The only thing you need are stones and a UTMB performance index. And I'll tell you how to get them now. So let's start with getting your performance index. This requires you to run in a UTMB index race or qualifier race. Two names for the same thing. There are hundreds of them all over the world. Many of them in the UK. UTMB qualifier races. They don't give you stones. They give you a performance index. And a performance index is just telling the UTMB organisation that you are able to or potentially able to run the distance that you want to enter at UTMB. So the categories are 20K, 50K, 100K and 100 miles. And all the races in those categories are listed on the UTMB website. And if you want to enter a race, maybe you might go to the race website. And the race website should have clearly listed on it whether it is a UTMB qualifier or a UTMB index race. It should also tell you what category it qualifies you in. So for example, you might run a 42 kilometer trail race, but that might be listed as a 50K category qualifier. So once you've got your performance index, the next thing you do is to collect some stones. And you do that by taking part in a UTMB event. Now those are different from UTMB qualifiers. So a UTMB event is owned and run by the UTMB organisation. And it will have UTMB in the title or by UTMB. So the only one in the UK is the UTS, the Ultra Trail Snowdonia. And that is by UTMB. And taking part in one of the UTS races in the UK will give you stones. So the UTS 50K will give you two stones. The UTS 100K will give you three stones. And the UTS 100 Milo will give you four UTMB stones. Of course, you could go abroad to get your stones, go into Europe. Very exciting. Feels like a real adventure to go off to Thailand or America, take part in Western states or any of the UTMB events that give you stones across the world. Now, here's the rub. The more stones you collect, the more chance you have of being successful in the ballot for one of the UTMB races. And this is where we secretly talk about the UTMB majors. There are only three UTMB major events around the world. One in Thailand, one in the USA and one in Europe. Specifically in Spain, it's called Val d'Oran. I have done it. If you enter one of the UTMB majors, you will get double stones. So if you do the 100 mile race at Val d'Oran in Spain, you will get eight running stones as opposed to four running stones for any standard UTMB event around the world. That's why you might want to consider doing a UTMB major to get your stones. Of course, it goes without saying that if you enter a UTMB event or a UTMB major, say you did 100 miles in a UTMB event, that would still give you that would give you a 100 mile category performance index. So you essentially do only need to do one race to be able to qualify for UTMB. Do the UTS 50K in Wales, that will give you two UTMB running stones and a 50K performance index, allowing you to enter the OCC, which is the 50K race in Chamonix. Now, it's also worth mentioning that not all of the races at the UTMB Festival Week, the Finals, require you to have stones. For example, TDS, which is 145 kilometers, although actually a bit more when I did it, doesn't require stones at all because it's not officially part of the UTMB finals, although it's a race held in the same week, the same venues, essentially all part of the same festival, but it's not part of the UTMB finals. The only ones that are are OCC, CCC and UTMB. Those are the ones that you need to collect stones for. So you've done your qualification race, you've got your performance index, you've done your UTMB event or your UTMB major race, so you've got your stones, then you need to go and register at the UTMB website. It should have your race results there ready and it should be able to tell you how many stones you've got and what races that qualifies you to register for. And then all you have to do is enter the race, wait for the ballot to be drawn and hope that your name comes up. Now, OCC is really oversubscribed. We think there is a bias towards allowing women to take part, so you're more likely to get in if you are a woman than a man, but fingers crossed after one or two or three attempts you will get in. UTMB, that's very oversubscribed as well, but not quite as much as OCC. You've probably got the best chance going for CCC, which is the 100k race, even though that is probably pretty oversubscribed as well. So good luck. I really hope you get in. I really hope you enjoy your race in Chamonix. If you make it there, whichever distance you do, remember there are races from 15 kilometres upwards and kids' races as well, so there's something for absolutely everyone. If you'd like to watch the last race I did at UTMB, that was TDS. Click that link right there. If you haven't subscribed to the channel, I really appreciate it if you could do that now. Thank you very much and we will see you for week four of the UTMB training series on the start line next time. Bye-bye.