Kilian Jornet: a Case Study in Aerobic Capacity - Adelaide Running Coach

ONE TRAINING BLOCK TO RULE THEM ALL?

Following Kilian Journet’s record-breaking double at last year’s Hardrock and UTMB races, I couldn’t help but notice that a significant amount of the general commentary surrounding the UTMB win centered squarely on his UTMB-specific training block in the months prior to race day.

“How much weekly vert did he accrue?”, “What was his weekly mileage?”, “What workouts did he do?”, “How much was training at altitude?”, “What was his training percentage of Zone 1 and 2 compared to Zone 3?” etc. etc. 

I must admit, before having access to a coach who could help me see the bigger training picture (thanks Andy Dubois), along with a solid understanding of the training physiology “hows?” and “whys?”, I too would have easily got caught up in the “one block to rule them all” analysis, possibly taking my approach for all future races from the GOAT’s approach and foolishly thinking that his win was all down to one, god-like training block.

CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING

In reality, Kilian, and many elite athletes like him, aren’t solely defined by one training block, and in a room of 50 elites, pretty much all of them are training at an exceptionally high level and are doing many of the same things in training; so what gives? Would it be fair to say that Kilian simply trained that much better than the rest?

My answer? Maybe yes, maybe no, but likely no.

Reducing Kilian’s UTMB or Hardrock wins to one singular training block completely disregards the immeasurably valuable decades of consistent aerobic training that he has put in across a multitude of disciplines. 

He first hiked mountains at altitude at age 3, he’s an elite skier, an elite ski-mountaineer, and an exceptional cyclist, with all of these disciplines feeding into an immense aerobic machine that can then be fine tuned according to the specifics of his chosen races.

THE IMPORTANCE OF AEROBIC CAPACITY

Aerobic Capacity, a term coined by Bob Bowman, renowned coach of Michael Phelps, describes training that focuses on building long-term potential, often at the expense of short-term performance ie. all of those easy effort workouts that aren’t glamorous and can be at times, downright boring, but from a physiological point of view, are the special sauce in high-performance jambalaya. 

Killian hasn’t just run a bunch of easy Zone 1 or 2 miles for a few months or years, he’s done so for nearly 3 decades, and because of this, his aerobic capacity is probably the size of Mont Blanc itself. Kilian can train the way he does NOW precisely because of the training he has done BEFORE. 

Last year’s Hardrock and UTMB double didn’t occur in a bubble, and whilst from a physical standpoint, I’m sure his training blocks were excellent, their structure and execution in the short-term weren’t the main driver for success.

Kilian’s multi-decade approach to accruing a tonne of easy aerobic volume serves as an invaluable reminder to us non-elite athletes about the importance of committing to the aerobic grind as much as possible, promoting consistency, and trying wherever possible to view performance improvements through a long-term lens, rather than attempting to rush gains in the short-term.