DIY Training Camps: The Missing Piece in Your Ultra Prep

Training fresh is the easy part. What happens under fatigue is everything. In this episode, CTS Coach Cliff Pittman explains how DIY training camps can bridge that gap by simulating the physical and psychological demands of late-race conditions.

We cover how to structure a 2-3 day training block, when to schedule it, and how to balance stimulus with recovery so you gain meaningful adaptation without unnecessary risk.

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HOST

Cliff Pittman is the Coaching Development Director at CTS, leading the Ultrarunning and Cycling Coaching staff with a specialty in guiding athletes from first-time ultrarunners to elite competitors at races like Western States 100, Leadville 100, and the Triple Crown of 200s. A competitive trail and ultra athlete himself, Cliff brings firsthand experience and a rare ability to turn complex training science into simple, actionable coaching.

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Transcript

Why Late Race Fatigue Wins

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Most ultra runners know how to train when they're fresh. They know how to execute a long run, manage a steady effort, hit fueling targets when fatigue is contained within a single session. And what's far less familiar and far more consequential on race day is how it feels to move, fuel, and make decisions when fatigue has been accumulating for 20, 24, or even 30 hours. A single long run can teach you a lot. What it cannot replicate is being 75 miles into a 100-mile race when glycogen is low and appetite is inconsistent and very small decisions begin to carry outsized consequences. That's the point in a race where pacing discipline, fueling execution, and emotional regulation matter most. And it's also the hardest state to prepare for in training. I'm Cliff Pittman, Pro Ultra Running Coach and Director of Coaching at CTS. Coach athletes from first-time ultrarunners to professional and world-class athletes. Today we're talking about DIY training camps, what they are, why they work, and how to build one that actually prepares you for late race demands. So let's start with what a training camp is not. First, it's not a three big days of running squeezed into your normal life. It's not about doing more work for the sake of doing more work, and it is not a fitness hack. A DIY training camp is a very deliberate tool designed to address a specific gap in long distance preparation, which is the ability to execute well under deep accumulated fatigue. And we cannot fully replicate 75 miles of race fatigue in training, and we shouldn't try. The cost is way too high, and the margin for error too small. But we can get closer, very intelligently, without taking on unnecessary risk. We can do this by stacking large, race-specific efforts across multiple consecutive days. A well-designed camp lets you approximate the physical and psychological load of late race fatigue in a very controlled environment. Close enough to be informative, but also far enough away to allow recovery. So, what does a camp actually develop? Well, three things. First, physiological durability. Stacking long efforts back to back places meaningful stress on the musculoskeletal system, connective tissues, and peripheral fatigue resistance. These are the tissues and systems that become limiting factors late in a 100k or 100 mile plus race. They need to be stressed specifically, not just in volume, but in sequence. Second, fueling execution under fatigue. Appetite is gonna fade, sweetness becomes less appealing, and small errors carry greater consequences as hours accumulate in a race. Many athletes manage fueling really well during isolated long runs and then struggle when fatigue starts to stack. Now a camp exposes those gaps early when you can still make adjustments. And then third, decision making under stress. Okay, pacing discipline and gear choices, mental strategies. A camp lets you stress test all of that without the irreversible consequences of race day. If something breaks down, you find out now instead of mile 60. Okay, let's talk about timing. For most 100k to 100 mile athletes, the optimal window for a training camp is five to eight weeks before the A race. Now that timing matters for two reasons. Place it too close to race day, then you risk carrying a lot of residual fatigue to the starting line. The musculoskeletal system takes longer to recover than the cardiovascular system. But if you place it too far out, then the specificity fades, or you peak too early in training. You'll be really fit, but you'll lose the rehearsal benefit that makes a camp so valuable. So five to eight weeks is the balance point. Enough time to absorb the workload and carry the adaptations forward into race day. One more thing on timing. What happens before the camp matters as much as when it occurs. Entering a training camp already fatigued will reduce its effectiveness and raises injury risk. Most successful camps are preceded by a short recovery phase. That way you arrive relatively fresh. Let fatigue develop as a result of the camp structure, not as a carryover from prior training overload. Alright, let's talk structure. Most camps are built around two to three consecutive days of running. Three days typically provides the best balance between stimulus and recoverability. So here's a practical way to scale it. I want you to think about your typical mid-week endurance run, that steady aerobic session that you perform consistently during the week. For most experienced ultrarunners, that's somewhere between 75 and 120 minutes. So day one of the camp is gonna be roughly four times that duration. So if your reference point or run is 90 minutes, then day one is approximately six hours. And then day two and day three are roughly two times that reference point. So about three hours each. Now that structure is not arbitrary. The longest day goes first when you're relatively fresh, so you can manage effort appropriately and establish a meaningful fatigue baseline. From there, fatigue drives the difficulty throughout the camp, not intensity. That's the point. Intensity throughout the camp should remain relatively low. Easy aerobic effort, specific to race day effort, guided primarily by perceived exertion. The goal is steady, sustainable movement, not testing top-end fitness like you're running a 5K. Planning for logistics is absolutely imperative here. This is where athletes consistently underestimate the preparation required. A training camp is a temporary shift in priorities. For its duration, training and recovery move to the absolute center. Work obligations, family logistics, and external stressors need to be intentionally minimized. That requires a lot of planning and it usually requires good communication. Tell your employer, your family, and reduce your cognitive load. Mental fatigue compounds physical fatigue. And managing normal work stress while running six hours a day undermines both recovery and execution. Now, on location, you want to match the environment to your goal race, at least as closely as possible. Think terrain, elevation, footing, and climate. When exact replication isn't feasible, prioritize the most defining characteristics of the race, and accept compromise elsewhere. I'll share a lesson from my own experience. In one of my training camps, I underestimated the logistical complexity. A long race-specific run required multiple water drops, which added hours of driving on remote forest service roads before and after the session. Some road closures forced reroutes, and some roads were impassable. And what should have been a focused training day became mentally and emotionally taxing. The running stress was already really high, and layering logistical stress on top of it compromised my recovery and limited how well I executed the following two days. The lesson here is stress is cumulative. Your body doesn't distinguish between physical load and frustration. Simplify your world for the duration of the camp. Plan out your meals, protect your sleep, make this weekend all about you. And you can blame me if your partner gets upset. What does a well-executed camp teach you? Well, it shows you how you respond when fatigue is no longer theoretical. You learn what breaks down first, whether it be physical or strategy or gear-related. And you learn what holds together longer than you actually expected. Which strategies remain reliable under stress and which ones fall apart. Fueling challenges become far more obvious. These aren't failures, they're information, they're signals, arriving early enough that you can still act on them. A camp also builds confidence grounded in experience, not optimism. Completing a demanding block gives you a tangible evidence of what you're capable of and even helps you project a race time. Now fatigue becomes familiar instead of intimidating, and discomfort is reframed as expected rather than alarming. And that familiarity carries forward into race day, where uncertainty is often more costly than the fatigue itself. And perhaps most importantly, a camp teaches restraint. Success isn't defined by how aggressively you executed day one of the camp. It's defined by how well execution is sustained across the entire three-day block. And that lesson translates directly to long ultramarathons where discipline and patience often matter more than the fitness alone. So here's the bottom line. A DIY training camp doesn't just make you fitter, though it does that too. It makes you better informed and more confident and more prepared to execute on race day. So not just knowing what you hope to do, but knowing what you're actually capable of when it matters. Now, if you want to go deeper on why durability is the defining variable and ultra-marathon performance and how it's built over a full training cycle, watch the fourth variable durability video next. And if you want coaching that builds this kind of preparation around the specific goals and event, visit trainwrite.com to connect with the CTS coach and subscribe for more coach driven ultra running education.