The West Highland Way Ultra – A Training Journey (part 4)

The majority of this blog post was written a couple of weeks ago, but was paused to allow space for other commitments. I have retained the contents of what was to be published - it may read a little out of date being released only now, but is relevant to the timepoint to which it refers!

Happy new year 🥳! It has been a delayed attempt to get to this blog post for week 3 of my West Highland Way ultra training journey. I have been working on several pressing personal and professional projects over this last week and a half and the blog (but not the training!) has taken a back seat. Let’s get to it…

Time on feet (running!)

As week 3 was the crescendo of block 1 training, it stands to reason this week would be the biggest hitter for time on feet (running) so far. This proved to be the case as my step count for week 3 had me cover 78.7 miles/127km on foot. This is a reduction of around 9 miles/14.5km in overall steps distance from week 2. Of this, 54.4 miles/87.5km were spent in running mode. This is in increase of 7 miles from week 2. You know what that means! Yup, my percentage of time on feet in running mode shot up from 54.3% in week 2 to a lofty 69% this week. This increase is higher than I would expect in a normal week 3 of my ultra training programme. Why? Simply put – Christmas! If I wasn’t running, I was often sitting whilst Christmas visiting, sitting whilst watching Christmas (mostly animation) movies, sitting whilst tucking into (vegan) Christmas fare…you get the jist 🙂. What’s important in a week like this is not the surge in percentage of time on feet running. What’s important is that every single planned run was executed amidst all the other Christmas stuff I like to do. I ran and I Christmas-ed 😊.

Runs for week 3

In week 3 of training, I was shooting for around 55-56 miles/88.5-90km of run distance. At 54.4miles/87.5 I pretty much hit the nail on the head, minus a small shortfall in intended distance on my interval session (more on that below).

As with week 2, I started week 3 with a rest day (from running) after higher mileage at the weekend. I still went ahead with my usual Monday morning cardio class. I won’t drop those until the training programme requires a reduction in almost all other cardio except running. For now it can stay! Even on the Monday I felt like I was starting the week somewhat fatigued from the fortnight of training that was already in the bag. This is normal of course, particularly in high mileage and elevation ultra training. Thankfully my body knows how to train and keep going when tired. Getting through the mental and physical fatigue and keeping going is an essential building block of an ultra runner. Besides…recovery week was always that little carrot dangling in front of me!

First run up was a hill endurance interval session. I picked a runnable trail hill that I thought would last the 5 minute fast intervals up with the 1 minute recovery jogs down. I needed something that would last for 5 repetitions of this format before I ran out of hill. As it turns out, the hill I chose lasted 2 repetitions before I had exhausted the incline 😭. The last 3 intervals were spent trying to go a more direct (steep and muddy) line down towards the start point as far as possible before my watch buzzed to go up again the normal way. It was a bit shoddy – some of the ups were spent going down and some of the downs were spent going up 😆. Nevertheless, the constant switching between uphill and downhill was a good workout, taxing the legs and lungs sufficiently. The tip toe descent down the steep slopes did lead to a bit less distance than I would have expected for the type of interval session I had planned. All in, I had fun and was out on the trails as the sun came up 🌄 – a great first run of the week.

Almost every other run was of the easy variety. A lovely Christmas toddle on the trails with Green Strides Fitness’ co-conspirator, Susan, was followed by a gentle solo 14-mile Boxing Day run around the streets. On the Friday I chummed Susan for 7.2 miles/11.5km of a duathlon challenge she was doing for charity. She went much further than that (I’m so proud of her 💚).

Saturday was the high mileage of the week, an 18-miler/29km with as much trail and elevation as I could fit into my schedule that day. I managed to run around 80% on trails, and gain an overall elevation of 837 metres/2746ft. You can see from my elevation profile below that I was either running up or down! I learned from my poor trail footwear choice from last week and made sure I was donning my tougher Altra Lone Peak 6 shoes for this one! (Note: Altra no longer advertise their shoes as vegan as they cannot guarantee the glue does not contain animal product 😢 – the Altra Lone Peak 6 shoes are an older model released prior to this shift).

As with week 2, I finished off my weeks running by hitting the pavements in my Altra Rivera 2’s (also a model pre-dating the retraction of their shoes being vegan) for a cheeky 4 miles/6.4km on the Sunday before spending the rest of the day taking niece #1 to a musical.

Gaining elevation

Week 3 run training for the West Highland Way ultra totaled an ascent of 1,586 metres/5203ft. Over half of this was the aforementioned Saturday run, which is perfect West Highland Way ultra training!

Garmin Endurance Score

My Garmin Endurance Score continues to increase!

Endurance Score (start of week 3 v end of week 3) 👇  

I’ll return to the question I received a couple of weeks ago – how does Garmin calculate the Endurance Score and is it specific to me?

Since starting this ultra training programme, the blend of flat routes and hilly routes, long efforts and short efforts, high intensity and low intensity, and different activities (primarily running, walking, and cardio fitness) has created ongoing increases in my Endurance Score. The biggest bang for the buck is undoubtedly the longer sustained efforts, however this doesn’t always mean that more is more. Garmin is not the Strava community…it is interested in more than just increasing distance and pace 😆 (that rant is for another day, though). It is also calculating relative efforts for any given activity session. For example, Garmin is monitoring my heart rate (and corresponding pace) over all elevation points of a hilly run for the duration of my activity (not just distance!). It then couples this data this with the frequency of my sessions and how my body responds to different conditions (e.g., my heart rate doesn’t shoot up on a slow run, especially if running the day after a heavy run day – which is a good thing!) to determine if I have sound cardiovascular endurance or if I am showing signs of fatigue within my frequent workload (e.g., my heart rate does shoot up on a slow run, especially if running the day after a heavy run). Signs of fatigue will stagnate or even reduce my Endurance Score.

Garmin uses all of my activity data (over a duration of weeks to a few months worth of previous activities) to generate an overall score that tells me where I sit in relation to ‘norms’. Norms are a set of tables, mostly split by sex and age group, that tells you where you are in relation to others within that same sex and age group. It isn’t clear where Garmin is drawing these norms from (it looks like internal data), but you can see them here. My Garmin Endurance Score is specific to me which is a good thing as I can see my own progress. At the same time it allows me to compare my score to norms it has collated, which is useful if I want to see where I sit in a wider context.

Garmin Hill Score

My Hill Score by the end of week 3 had increased 3 points, which I am satisfied reflects my increased workload on this front.

Hill Score (start of week 3 v end of week 3) 👇

In part 3 of this West Highland Way ultra training blog, I explained the 3 components the Garmin uses to generate a Hill Score for me: hill endurance, hill strength, and VO2Max. The formula it uses for this is unknown! I also said I will show how my Hill Score is broken down into it’s constituent parts and how I will use these separate scores to increase my overall Hill Score during my West Highland Way ultra training journey.

Garmin already has an estimated V02Max for me, currently sitting at 50. To be clear, estimated VO2Max scores (especially those not calculated using sub-maximal VO2Max fitness testing) can be way off! Usually fitness watches work in our favour and overestimate rather than underestimate. So 50 is my number and I take it with a pinch of salt. However, given that for someone of my sex and age group a superior score starts at around 46 (depending on which norms table you read), that gives me a little wiggle room to drop a few points in reality and still be in the top 20% of the female aged 40-49 (ahem!) population! I can get behind that 😆. My VO2Max number has not changed since starting my training. This is normal as it’s not a number that just shoots up like an Endurance Score or Hill Score (particularly if it is already high). So that’s not what is influencing my Hill Score. Let’s look elsewhere 🔎.

Week 1 and week 2 of training was mostly spent increasing the distance of my easy and steady paced work on inclines. This is where all of my initial gains in Hill Score have come from. As the images below show, my Hill Endurance score (in top grey boxes, under Factors) increased from 57 prior to beginning training, to 60 (moderate) at the end of week 1, a jump to 73 (high) at the end of week 2 and another jump to 76 at the end of this week.

By comparison, because I have yet to start intentionally training hill strength and power, the images above show that my Hill Strength scores (in middle grey boxes, under Factors) has not increased with as much gusto. The Hill Strength score stayed at 49 (moderate) at the end of week 1 and only shifted a reasonable amount (to 63, still moderate) by the end of this week (week 3). This shift is simply the by-product of taking in more hills in general, rather than specific training.

Given the level of elevation I will be taking in on the West Highland Way ultra, suffice to say Hill Strength will get the training attention it deserves and that score should increase its contribution to my overall Hill Score. There are, of course, still a lot of gains to be made in Hill Endurance and VO2Max scores – it’s a fine balancing act 😉.

You might have figured out by now that improvements in running do not just come from trying to run further and faster (though in the absence of all else, that will move the needle somewhat in the first instance). There is actually a whole science and art behind it 🙂. If you want the help of a professional running coach to improve your running (no matter the distance goal or your starting point) in the safest and most efficient way possible, contact us! Let us be the swans feet paddling under the surface, whilst you make your running progression look effortless and serene!

Week 4 West Highland Way ultra training

At the time of writing, I am well into week 4 of training (Reminder: this post was delayed in publication and I am now beyond this point – see note at outset!). Week 4 is recovery week 🥳! I have easy runs planned. mostly in single figures with only one 10-mile exception. There is even more than one day of rest from running! I will also enjoy some lower intensity cross training in the gym this week. My body is fatigued from the first 3 weeks of training so we are looking forward to the slower pace (pun intended) during recovery week.

My overall distance during recovery week should hit around 28 miles/45km. And every mile/km will be a slow gift to the legs for a job well done so far 🙂.

Follow along with my West Highland Way ultra training!

If you want to follow along and vicariously train for and complete the ridiculously long and high West Highland Way ultra, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on the socials 👇. Maybe you actually ARE doing something similar and would value some shared comradeship as you traverse your journey! Subscribe and follow too!

I’d love to have you share my West Highland Way Ultra 2025 training journey! Curious about something I’ve said (or not said) or want me to dive into certain training areas in future West Highland Way ultra training blog posts? Let me know in the comments!

Shari 💚