Part 2: The Art of Adding Specificity

Last week, we explored the hypothesis that for most weekend warriors, base fitness reigns supreme, and obsessively chasing course-related specificity can be overrated. We looked at why a strong aerobic engine, robustness, and adaptability built through general fitness and strength are your most valuable assets, citing insights from coaches like Jason Koop and sports scientists like Stephen Seiler. If you missed Part 1, I encourage you to check it out!

This week, we'll shift our focus. Does this mean specificity is useless? Absolutely not! It just means specificity has its place – and that place is after you’ve built a substantial base. Think of race-specific training as the final polish for a goal event, not the foundation.

How and When to Add Specificity: The Icing, Not the Cake

When to add specificity: It becomes most beneficial in the last 8–12 weeks leading up to your key A-race. Before this final phase, your focus should remain on developing that broad aerobic engine and overall strength. As Dr. Seiler’s hierarchy and many coaches suggest, you train less-specific qualities farther out, and the closer you get to race day, the more your training should resemble the race.

How to add specificity: Don’t replace your foundational training wholesale; instead, integrate specific workouts strategically. For example, continue your weekly long runs and easy runs (to maintain volume), but start incorporating elements that mimic the race conditions during some sessions. A few ways to do this include:

• Strategic Integration: Adjust a percentage of your workouts to mirror race demands, but avoid overhauling your routine. For instance, if you normally run 5 days a week, you might make one of those a race-specific workout (hills, technical trail, etc.) while the others still build base fitness.

• Simulate Key Challenges: Identify the toughest aspects of your upcoming race and practice those occasionally. If your race has long, sustained climbs, include some long uphill efforts or treadmill inclines. If it features technical descents, seek out rocky trails or do downhill repeats to build eccentric leg strength. If it’s a swimrun with cold open-water swims, do some open-water sessions and practice swim-to-run transitions.

• Gear and Nutrition Practice: Specificity isn’t only about terrain – it’s also about logistics. Practice with your race gear (pack, shoes, poles, wetsuit, tether) and dial in your nutrition/hydration strategy. These specifics won’t improve your aerobic capacity, but they prevent race-day surprises and boost efficiency. There’s nothing worse than discovering at kilometer 10 of a race that your new pack chafes or you can’t open a gel with cold fingers.

The key is that these specific adaptations and skills are the icing on the cake. They’re important for peak performance, but they won’t compensate for a half-baked cake (poor base fitness). As one coach humorously summarized: don’t worry about the color of the sprinkles on your icing if your cake isn’t cooked! Focus on baking the cake first.

Is There a Minimum Training Volume Before Specificity Makes Sense?

While there’s no magic number, coaches generally agree that for lower-volume athletes (say, training 5–8 hours per week), every minute is best spent on general aerobic development and strength. You’ll see far greater returns from adding an extra easy run or strength session than from trying to replicate very specific course features on limited time. Specificity starts to pay dividends once you have a sufficient base of training volume that can support those extra stresses.

For specificity to genuinely enhance performance (rather than detract from overall fitness), you ideally want a consistent base of at least ~8–10 hours of training per week for several months. At that point, your aerobic system is well-developed, and you have enough fitness reserve to layer in race-specific sessions without undue injury or burnout risk. For ultra-distance athletes, this base volume might need to be even higher before truly granular specificity becomes critical.

Coach Jason Koop makes a similar point regarding trail versus road training: you don’t need to do all your runs on trails to be good at trail races. What matters first is your aerobic fitness, no matter how you build it. As Koop advises:

This insight reinforces that if you’re time-crunched, you can train wherever and however fits your schedule (road, track, treadmill, etc.) to develop fitness, then use the final weeks to sharpen specific skills needed for the trail or course in question. Don’t feel guilty if you can’t hit giant mountains every weekend or if the local pool is your only option for swims – you’re still banking fitness that will translate on race day.

Examples of Specificity Interventions

Once your base is solid and you’re in that final race-prep phase, here are some targeted specificity strategies for common course challenges:

Hilly Races

• Power Hiking: Incorporate sustained power-hiking sessions on steep inclines, mimicking long climbs. This builds leg strength and efficiency for when running becomes impractical on very steep sections.

• Downhill Training: Practice controlled downhill running on technical trails to improve your confidence and build eccentric muscle strength (hello, quads!). This helps prevent your legs from getting trashed during race descents.

• Stair or Treadmill Climbs: If you lack natural hills, stair repeats or setting a treadmill to a high incline can approximate the climbing stress. It’s a great substitute to condition your calves and glutes for elevation gain.

• Bike Big Gear Stomping: Having done Rockman last week one thing I would have added to my training regime would be bike commutes on my single speed. The big gear stomping would have helped prepare my quads for the endless step-ups during the event.

Also for extreme climbs like Rockman’s 4444 Flørli Stairs, the focus shifts from just strength to mental resilience and pacing strategy. While installing an endless staircase might be impractical (and attract strange looks from neighbors!), consistent, long-duration stair or incline work will condition you for the sustained effort and unique muscular fatigue of such a monumental climb.

Technical Terrain

• Trail Runs on Rugged Paths: Seek out rocky, root-laden, or uneven trails for some of your runs. This will improve your footwork, ankle stability, and proprioception. Over time, you’ll get more agile and confident hopping between rocks or navigating tricky footing.

• Agility Drills: Off the trail, exercises like ladder drills, cone zig-zags, or balance exercises can sharpen your agility. Think of it as “prehab” to strengthen the small stabilizer muscles and reflexes that keep you upright when the going gets rough.

Long Swims / Open-Water

• Continuous Open-Water Swims: If your race features a long swim (or multiple swims), do some longer uninterrupted swims in open water. Pool intervals build fitness, but open water builds the specific mental and physical endurance for continuous distance. Learning to keep the power on for longer durations is a skill. Plus, you’ll practice sighting and dealing with waves or currents.

• Cold Water Acclimatization: For events like Rockman with frigid fjord and lake swims, gradually expose yourself to cold water. Short cold-water swims or even cold showers can help your body (and mind) adapt. Come race day, you’ll be less shocked by the temperature and can keep a steadier pace.

Multi-Sport Transitions

• Brick Sessions: Practice back-to-back disciplines, like a swim immediately followed by a run (classic swimrun brick) or a bike-to-run for triathletes. Transitioning while tired teaches your body to switch muscle groups and helps you dial in gear changes (like removing a wetsuit or switching shoes) under pressure.

Gear Rehearsal: In swimrun, for example, practice tethered swimming and transitions. In ultra runs if you plan to use poles, practice deploying and stowing them on the move. These little skills save minutes on race day and prevent fumbling.

Hot or Cold Conditions

• Heat Acclimation: If you’re targeting a hot race (say, a summer Ironman or a desert ultramarathon), spend time training in warmer parts of the day or sit in a sauna post-workout. Over a few weeks, your body will increase plasma volume and start sweating more efficiently, which can significantly improve performance in the heat.

• Cold Weather Prep: Conversely, for a cold race, train in a similar chill when possible. Do some runs in cold morning air with the gear you’ll use (jackets, gloves) so you learn how to manage layering and so your lungs acclimate a bit. Cold exposure can train your body to generate heat and use fuel a touch differently (more carbs), so it’s worth familiarizing yourself if extreme cold will be a factor.

Each of these interventions is the “specificity icing” on top of your well-built cake. They address particular challenges of your event, but notice that none of them replace the fundamentals. Even for a hilly race, an elite coach like David Roche might have you doing plenty of flat tempo runs and gym squats in addition to some hill work – because the stronger engine and legs you build from those will propel you up the hills more than any amount of obsessing over the exact gradient of your target climb.

The Verdict: Build Your House, Then Decorate It

The takeaway: Build your house before you worry about decorating it. For us weekend warriors, the bedrock of consistent, general aerobic training and strength building will yield the greatest returns. It’s tempting to chase flashy, course-specific workouts (they make us feel like we’re directly tackling the race), but often that’s just painting the walls before the foundation is set.

Prioritize smart, consistent training over chasing fleeting hyper-specific metrics. Then, once your base is robust, you can sprinkle in those specific sessions to fine-tune for your A-race. You’ll arrive at the start line not just prepared for the course’s quirks, but equipped with the kind of all-around fitness and resilience that makes you ready for anything.

Thank you for following along with my journey. I hope this perspective helps you allocate your training time more effectively. Build that cake, then enjoy adding the icing when the time is right – and race day will be all the sweeter for it!

Next week we look back at the Rockman Swimrun Long Course. What a day!