I've coached plenty of athletes to run 100k. I've even coached a few through 100 miles, too. What I hadn't done, until recently, was coach anyone to run that far fast.
That's a different kind of hard. For most, finishing 100k is about getting to the finish line in one piece. Ben Khoo was chasing something else. He was after Singapore's 100k national record.
Running 100k fast is a different problem entirely. Staying on pace when everything in you wants to slow down.
At 4:15 to 4:25 per km, Ben's goal pace, he was looking at a seven hour race, give or take. That pace demanded serious aerobic fitness from the first step and serious durability by the last.
The first challenge was obvious: energy.
You can't run for seven hours at this pace without taking in a serious amount of carbohydrates. It's as much an eating contest as it is a running race.
It's one thing to consume a lot of carbs when you're watching TV. I know from experience. It's another to do it while running at 4:20/km, for hours on end.
Fortunately, he has a pretty solid gut. Even so, he made sure to practise taking in up to 120g of carbs at race intensity, because gels only help if you can actually absorb them and keep running.
Durability was the other challenge.
A hundred kilometres is an insane number of steps.
Every one of them is a small mechanical load through his foot, ankle, calf, Achilles, knee, hip and connective tissue. Multiply that by tens of thousands of steps, and it stops being about whether one muscle is strong enough to run 4:20/km.
Everything in him had to hold up for seven hours straight. Bones, tendons, muscles, feet, the lot. Break down anywhere along the way, and the race is done.
Like me, Ben's a triathlete by background. He already holds the Singapore Ironman record, and now he was chasing this one too.
That background set him up well. He's used to racing for over seven hours, and his body knows cross training.
So we made the most of it.
Running was the main focus of his training. Since he's not a pure runner and was coming off a niggle, we had to be careful with his run load.
We settled on five days a week, structured around one idea. Back-to-back long runs to minimise risk while building durability.
Instead of one long four or five hour slog, Ben ran long-ish two days in a row. Running on tired legs the second day prepared him for what was coming, with much less risk than a single very long run.
His longest individual run was just over three hours, about 40k. He backed it up the next day with two hours and nearly 30k, on already-tired legs.
One additional run in the week had shorter efforts at race pace. Everything else was just aerobic work. Nothing fancy. Easy days stayed easy.
He visited our lab for one-on-one strength work once a week. We targeted imbalances and built single-leg strength, since that's what running actually demands.
He did short, high intensity intervals on the bike because the impact is low and the aerobic stimulus is high. Plus, he already knew how to train well on one. You can push hard on a bike without your legs being too beat up. Other rides were easier, longer, aimed at general conditioning.
Swimming did similar work. All of it added fitness without adding impact.
How'd it all work out?
He broke the record. Two of them actually.
Ben crossed the line in 7:39:16, taking Singapore's 100k national record. He picked up the 50k record on the way through, too.
It was a little off the pace we trained for, but that doesn't matter. Two national records in one race is still one hell of a day, and we'll take it.
