In the first episode of Season 3 of the TrainingPeaks CoachCast, Ultrarunner/Athlete for Adidas TERREX Abby Hall and Coach Jason Koop joined Dirk to talk about how they adapted to the emotional highs and lows imposed by the previous year. They explored the importance of the ability to continuously ‘pivot’ and examined why some athletes flourished with the instability while others struggled (hint: it’s largely due to long-term motivation.)
Abby also offered insight into her Nüümü Poyo FKT attempt and shared her dreams for 2021 (supplemented by acquiring a customized, very cool adventure van.)
Stand-Out Quotes
“I mean, yeah, that’s a good question. Where do you start with an ultra runner? Cause it’s, it’s kind of like such a weird sport.
“I think that’s been hugely valuable to have a method to the madness and not just shooting at the moon…That greater strategy, to me as an athlete, allows for a bigger buy-in to the long-term process. I think that, in a lot of ways, gave me a kind of renewed purpose to my training.”
“As each race was canceled, I was just gutted. And so it wasn’t necessarily this, like, ‘Okay, now that this is canceled, I guess I’ll do this other awesome thing I’ve always wanted to do. It was like periods of mourning.”
“A lot of that became a question of not say, I was going to run 100k at UTMB, the replacement of that was not, ‘Okay, what’s another similar 100k effort I can go do?’ But, ‘What’s another thing that inspires me just as much or makes me feel lit up in that same way.'”
“Because of the circumstance and because Abby has such a robust history of training before I started working with her, all of these short-term pivots, they just were what they were, and they’ll be good for her long-term, cause it’s all training.”
Resources
Abby Hall’s Instagram
Abby Hall’s Blog
Jason Koop’s Instagram
Jason Koop’s Twitter
