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Do race training plans take into account elevation for trail races?

Seattle_Marathoner
5 months ago

When I set a goal for a known (running) race that is a trail race, will the default training plan take into account that it is a trail race with elevation gain and their compensate for the effect on expected finish time? From my limited experience with the training plans (as well as estimates for finish times), it does not. 

Is there anyway to fix this other than setting the finish time for the same distance event but flat, which is indeed tricky. 

Thanks. 

  • 0 4 months ago

    I have the same question (training using the race train option for a 31 mile 2000m ascent trail race). You can upload a GPX file of the course, and since doing so (rather than it just relying on the manually entered race distance that I had entered previously), it seems to nave added some interval training that wasn't there before, so maybe?

  • 0 3 months ago

    I want to say no, it’s proving to me as useless for trail races. 

    just today, the race coach is showing my upcoming race event that has a course loaded (so should have the elevation?!) and is showing my predicted time as beating the course record. That is wildly inaccurate. 

    for a flat run, it’s probably quite a bit closer

    obviously trail includes so many variables - there’s degrees of technicality and I have some downhill trails that are slower than flat or uphill given how technical (mtb trail) they are. 

    but I’m disappointed it is borderline useless otherwise