Lessons to think about

"The lesson I took from the day was that being able to cover the 39.3 miles was less to do with being mega-fit and more to do with how you paced the run."

Here is an example plan:

My training plan didn’t differ too much from a normal marathon one.
I loosely followed the Hal Higdon Ultra plan. It’s basically all about your weekend long runs and building those up gradually. You need to be used to running on tired legs and the Sunday long run was challenging more mentally than physically I found. But Connemara Ultra really gets going when you hit 26 miles in Leenane so you need that preparation
Below are some details on my Ultra training plan. This worked great for me. Every one will have a different view though.
But before I attempted the back to back long runs I had built my legs up to 20 miler and I had a good base. I always have a step back week at least every 4th week In general there was a gradual build up of weekend long runs. My weekend long runs in the last 11 weeks looked like:


Week 11 Saturday 12 miles
Sunday 16 miles
Week 10 Saturday 14 miles
Sunday 18 miles
Week 9 Saturday 16 miles
Sunday 20 miles
Week 8 Saturday 4 miles Step back week
Sunday Race 10 miles
Week 7 Saturday 20 miles
Sunday 20 miles
Week 6 Saturday 24 miles
Sunday 20 miles
Week 5 Saturday off Step back week (Wedding)
Sunday off
Week 4 Saturday 24 miles
Sunday 21 miles
Week 3 Saturday 12miles
Sunday 16 miles
Week 2 Saturday – Indoor tri
Sunday 11 miles
Week 1 Saturday 0 miles
Sunday Race