Science-based, personalized coaching is the future for trail runners who want to make the most of their training. Historically, the majority of trail runners (elites included) often feel like they’re guessing about how they should train for races. This is largely due to a lack of trail running specific-sports science and coaches with backgrounds in this subject (method/area). When the majority of coaches are simply using “copy-paste” static training plans without understanding the underlying principles of exactly how their training applies to their athlete’s individual backgrounds and racing goals, it is difficult for trail runners to adopt effective training methods.
With the recent growth of more competitive trail races and an increased focus on dedicated sports science in trail running, we are starting to see a desire for more structured, evidence-based coaching. Cliff Pittman, CARMICHAEL Training Systems (CTS) and UESCA certified running coach is at the forefront of this coaching movement in the U.S. Pittman seeks ways to grow as a coach and improve opportunities for other trail running coaches aiming to improve their coaching.
In the following Q&A interview, Pittman and I have a detailed discussion about his holistic coaching style, the future of trail running coaches, how to build positive mindsets for athletes, how to coach young runners, and so much more. It’s a long read but well worth your time if you’re a recreational or elite athlete seeking to raise the level of your running and stay healthy for years to come!
[TAYTE POLLMANN] You are a UESCA certified running coach. Could you explain the significance of what that means and why it might be beneficial for trail and ultrarunning coaches?
[CLIFF PITTMAN] One of the cool things about that certification is it reflects a professionalization of our sport. It’s commonly said that ultrarunning is roughly a decade behind other endurance sports as it relates to embracing scientific training principles. Cycling or triathlons have had professional coaches in the space for a long time, but in ultrarunning it’s still a very much of a grassroots movement.
Many training principles in ultrarunning have been instilled by a “this worked for Scott Jurek” approach. In other words, this worked for “insert name of whatever pro trail runner that you want” and do that. Even at the highest level, training protocols have been adopted by other elite athletes, and then you see a trickle-down effect to recreational runners. The great thing about the UESCA certification is that it’s really taking that next step of professionalizing and bringing evidence-based scientific training principles into the sport. It’s also vastly different from road marathon or track coaching certifications and takes into account that ultrarunning is a whole different sport than these other disciplines.
PROTIP: The 2024 UESCA Running Endurance Coaching Conference will be held September 26 to 29 in Colorado Springs, CO. Learn more at the link here.
Cliff Pittman seeks ways to grow as a coach and improve opportunities for other trail running coaches aiming to improve their coaching.
[TAYTE] You recently wrote a “Guide To Effective Goal Setting For Trail and Ultrarunners” for Trail Runner Magazine. You write, “It’s not solely about achieving the goal, but rather about the person you must become to attain it.” Could you share more about what that means? How does trail/ultra running allow us to discover new versions of ourselves?
[CLIFF] A mentor shared that quote with me several years ago, before I even got into trail and ultrarunning, and it’s stuck with me. It is a core component of how I help athletes set goals for themselves and keep things in a good, healthy perspective. It basically comes down to the classic discussion of outcome goals versus process goals.
I’m a believer in outcome goals as well as process goals. The sport that we participate in is very outcome-driven. There’s nothing wrong with that. We want to finish a race. We want to hit certain times in a race. We want podium finishes. There’s a place for all these things. But what the quote above is saying is that it’s all about the path or the journey that is required and the growth that’s required of you to become capable of reaching those outcomes. This requires a shift to process goal thinking.
The problem with focusing on outcomes alone is that they are largely out of our control. We can’t control the weather. We can’t control if we catch a bug on race day. But we can better control the process. Showing up every day, taking care of ourselves, and resting appropriately are all things we can control. Having a healthy mental state and healthy identity that’s associated with running is the key. The outcome is the target. The process is the path that gets you there.
At the end of the day, if we miss our outcome goal, we can say: “Okay, I missed the mark. I’m gonna go back and do this again. At the same time, I’m a better person today because of the work that I put into it.”
If we show up and do the work, the outcomes are typically going to come along over time. Our identity as runners is determined by the work that we put into it. Not what happens on race day.
[TAYTE] You joined the CARMICHAEL Training Systems (CTS) coaching crew in 2022. How has this elevated or changed your coaching career?
[CLIFF] It’s changed everything. When I decided to join CTS, I was being coached by – and am still coached by – CTS coach Jason Koop. At the time, I already had a full athlete load, and coaching was my full-time occupation. However, I felt like an island, and the draw to CTS was mentorship and connection. I wanted to elevate my game by surrounding myself with the best in the industry. The level of continuing education and mentorship that CTS provides was something that really attracted me. I joined the team, and my growth as a coach was accelerated significantly by just being associated with and engaged with all of the different coaches who had a vast amount of experience and helped me bring my game up to their level.
About a year ago, CTS was hiring a new coaching development director and because of my business background, it turned out to be a good fit for me. So, I’m currently on the CTS leadership team. I work with the 60 coaches that we have on the staff and I’m responsible for their growth and their development. I’ve taken a step back on my own coaching (working with 10 to 15 athletes at a time) and most of my time is spent helping develop and grow the company and the coaches.
Cliff Pittman at the 2023 UESCA Ultrarunning Coach Conference.
[TAYTE] You were a speaker at the UESCA Ultrarunning Coach Conference in September 2023. What topics did you speak on? How important was this event for connecting with other coaches in the running space?
[CLIFF] The conference does a good job of offering coaches a sense of community and plugging into other like-minded individuals. It was cool to go be a part of that conference and see just how many great coaches there are out there in the space right now. I had the opportunity to participate on a panel that was specifically geared towards business-building practices, helping coaches grow their businesses. My specific involvement in that panel was more so discussing the benefits of joining a coaching team like CTS. I also participated in the final “Q&A” panel with some of the other panelists, answering general coaching questions.
It’s important to be able to network and engage with coaches to glean different tips and tricks of the trade. UESCA now has a Facebook page for all of their certified coaches. Coaches post daily questions, share personal anecdotes, discuss research papers and it’s a great community that has been built by UESCA. Discussing research papers. It’s a really cool community that they’ve built.
[TAYTE] Outside Magazine just posted an article, “Can ChatGPT Train Me for the Boston Marathon?”. Where do AI and technological advancements in coaching fit into your role as a coach?
[CLIFF] Sophisticated individual customized coaching needs to be the future. AI is entering the coaching space and offering a service or a product that will essentially replace the bottom 20% of the coaching industry. Coaches who are writing static training plans, working with upwards of 400 athletes for $50 a month, never getting on the phone with their athletes, not adapting training, etc., will be replaced. AI is going to be able to do that just as well or potentially better than those coaches can. If coaches want to be relevant, they’re going to have to understand the sciences, and they’re going to have to, more importantly, be able to navigate those relationships and get the most out of those athletes by having those personal, human interactions. At the end of the day, what athletes are paying for is that human interaction.
[TAYTE] “Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?” Many of us relate to this music line by famed Canadian singer Avril Lavigne (whether we want to or not). In the trail ultra world, there are many complicated ways to train, diet, etc., that are all supposed to make us faster. How do you, as a licensed coach, sift through this wide world of trends, influencers, etc., and provide your athletes with the best training possible while avoiding the pitfalls of overcomplicating the process?
[CLIFF] The human body is very complex, but when it comes to building fitness, it is rather straightforward and simple. What you’ll find with our coaches at CTS, and what you’ll even see at the elite level with our athletes who are winning UTMB and doing a lot of amazing things, is that training is rather straightforward and simple. Sometimes, it could even be considered mundane. Ultimately, training all comes down to a few universal training principles:
- We want to overload particular systems with stress.
- We want to have adequate time to recover from those stresses.
- Stress, plus rest equals fitness.
Our job as coaches is often to make the complex concepts simple and sustainable over the long term. If we can get athletes to train consistently and regularly at a high level, that’s going to generate a much larger return on investment than some crazy “hero” workout that leaves them feeling wasted. If athletes spend too much time recovering from tough workouts or racing too frequently, they’re missing out on training opportunities. Whether they’re elite or everyday athletes, we’re helping them get out of their own way.
[TAYTE] Does the level of complexity change when coaching beginners versus elites or very experienced runners?
[CLIFF] Oftentimes, elite athletes are so talented that our job as coaches is simply to make sure we don’t screw things up. We need to make sure they can continue to train at a high level. Elite athletes have larger systems, and with these larger systems, there’s often a need for larger stressors. In many cases, elite athletes have already maxed out their training volume or are close to it. This means that we, as coaches, can’t just prescribe more miles in order to get them better because that could lead to diminishing returns. Our job is to figure out how to make those miles and the time spent training more effective. So, training is definitely more complex with elite athletes.
With beginner athletes, it is sometimes more simple than people realize. It’s just a matter of getting them out and running, helping them enjoy the process, making sure they rest appropriately, and then creating long-term sustainable practices and habits that will continue to develop year after year. Ultimately, their training may gradually become more complex and nuanced as they build larger systems. We’re trying to create sustainable practices for athletes.
There’s a lot of voices on social media, even some people out there with PhDs behind their names, that are taking these very simple concepts and making them way overcomplicated. This distracts people from doing the things that matter the most, like sleeping enough, eating enough, and training enough. If you can do those three things, you’re going to get better. We live in what I call a microwave society where we want instant gratification. We just want to put something in the microwave and for it to be done a few minutes later. Sometimes, training needs to be more like a slow cooker approach where we are letting things marinate and slow cook. I’m very cautious of any training intervention that says you can accelerate results and bypass the natural training process.
[TAYTE] You’ve written, “In trail and ultrarunning, a holistic approach to training, emphasizing fitness and personal adaption, is key to optimizing performance.” Could you describe this approach in more detail?
[CLIFF] What I was getting at when I made that statement is that you have to nail the basics first. How can we make athletes fitter and adapt to training stimuli? That matters significantly more than asking, “Should we start using ketones? Should we start optimizing fat metabolism? Should we start focusing on running-economy?” Those are all secondary concerns that can provide 1% or marginal gains.
“We need to major in the basics, minor in the marginal gains.”
We need to major in the basics and minor in the marginal gains. New athletes might obsess about their shoe choice because they think they’re going to have stronger feet and better-running economy if they choose this shoe versus that shoe when really the most important thing is finding a shoe that’s comfortable and running more. After we get the athlete running more, sleeping, and eating properly, then we can take a look at what types of shoes might be better or worse for a particular race. There are similar attitudes about eliminating food groups. Whenever people dive into those rabbit holes, it detracts from what they’re trying to accomplish overall.
[TAYTE] Do you find any differences in coaching athletes with or without track and cross country backgrounds?
[CLIFF] There’s a lot of great coaches in the track and cross country space. Many of whom preach the exact same message of the basics that I do. So, many of these track and cross country athletes have stronger foundations and a holistic approach because they have years and years of training history. On the flip side, we see a lot of ultra runners coming right off the couch, and that might be more of the type of athlete who’s looking for shortcuts because they feel like they’re behind the game. They don’t have years of work under their belt, so they are trying to find shortcuts to catch up.
[TAYTE] Trail runners come from a variety of athletic and sports backgrounds. Some have been trail running for years; some ran track, cross country, or roads, some skied, some played soccer, etc. How does your coaching approach change when working with athletes from these differing backgrounds?
[CLIFF] My coaching tailors to the individual and how to go about getting each athlete ready for their goal events. For example, with a track athlete, I might recognize that they have a large aerobic engine and strong general fitness already but are maybe lacking in the specificity of skills they’ll need for a trail race. With more experienced trail runners they might have room to grow their lactate threshold while their trail-specific skills are closer to maxed out. I would say that coaching must be very, very individual in order to account for the wide variety of backgrounds athletes come from.
[TAYTE] Is there a path for young runners who want to get into trail and ultramarathon competitions? Should they follow a progression from sub ultra (races less than 26.2 miles) to ultramarathon trail races or simply train for whatever their heart desires?
[CLIFF] I don’t know if I have the right answer. I love what Andy Wacker is doing with The Trail Team, and we need more of these kinds of projects for youth development. I’d be hesitant to say that there’s a clear progression for athletes so as not to pigeonhole them into certain styles and distances. There are cases where 17- and 18-year-old kids can start bumping up into larger miles and still have long, sustainable careers if they train appropriately and race appropriately.
However, we shouldn’t get caught up in the attitude that every trail runner should race the 100-mile distance because that’s some arbitrary gold standard that we set in the United States. I would like to see the culture shift to more shorter course racing while also acknowledging that some athletes are naturally better at longer distances. Athletes such as Kilian Jornet have had long careers at the highest level while racing long distances at a young age, and we shouldn’t discourage athletes like that from running longer if that’s their natural wiring.
[TAYTE] Are there additional health risks associated with longer (100-plus mile) races that should be considered?
[CLIFF] There are certainly some potential health risks racing many ultramarathons in one season. The stress put on the heart for those long durations can frequently be dangerous. If someone, even a younger athlete, wants to race a 100-mile race once a year, that’s potentially sustainable if they adequately trained for it. However, if they are trying to run multiple 100-mile races in a year, it’s likely that they won’t be able to have a recovery season that will allow their systems to recuperate before they start training for the next race.
[TAYTE] How do you feel about the development of youth trail running in the US as opposed to Europe where the sport is the most developed?
[CLIFF] We do need to change our culture in the US specifically to reflect a bit more of what Europe has, where short-course (sub-ultramarathon distance) racing is glorified. Phenomenal European athletes run short-course trail races, not only ultramarathons. We are starting to see that change here in the US. The Dirt Circus Racing Series is one good example that helped shine a light on our sub-ultramarathon stars, such as Christian Allen, Morgan Elliot, Dani Moreno, Megan Lacy, and many others.
Interested in working with Coach Pittman? Find his coaching availability here.
All photos in this article have been generously provided by Cliff Pittman.
