Carterusm: I built up my long runs much like for marathon, tbh for my 50-miler my longest run was no more that 24 miles, I tried to run something the next day, no specific distance but just to get that tired legs feeling. When time allowed I tried to fit in a speed session OR a hill session, sometimes my speed session was a speedier 'round town' run with my running club rather than a specific reps session. If I am doing a shorter 'long' run - say 15 miles then I try and make that a bit speedier than the plod I use for say a 20+ miler. I also discovered that running my long runs at a proper slow plod was much less debilitating than doing it faster so I could then get more training in. This year I suffered a lot with some unresolved asthma issues and my paces for everything reflected this and I was slower overall in the three ultras I did than I would have hoped, having struggled with pace in training runs. I'm hoping next year that I'll be on the case with that. So I DO think speed has it's place, as does hill work but it's a balance between that and getting the extra distance in. I am focussing more on hills now as I find that if my quads get trashed in a race then that will slow me down. Ultra training schedules are massively variable compared to marathon schedules and people often follow a compilation of things and come up with their own!!
God I hope that makes any kind of sense, brain a bit pickled day!!
