Author: Uphill Athlete

I’m always dreaming of the next trip and the next big mountain. The way I usually choose mountains to climb is by how they look in photographs. That aesthetic aspect of alpinism is evidently very important to me. If it’s a beautiful line on a beautiful mountain, I’m drawn to climbing it. But as a full-time physician and mother of two boys, I can’t always take a full month off to climb a big peak. Or if I can, then that may be the only trip I will be able to do in a year. That’s where the idea of…

Skimo racing is hands down the hardest aerobic work I’ve done in my endurance career. The full-body engagement and use of both legs and arms to propel myself uphill causes me to taste blood much quicker than in any running race I have ever participated in. I love that about the sport, and without a doubt it’s imperative to work hard on preparing your heart and lungs as best you can before your first (or 10th) skimo race season. With that said, you can have the world’s highest VO2max, but if you do not know how to do a quick…

One hundred miles. Could I even run that far? It was a mystery I wanted to solve. Starting about five years ago, when I first got hooked on trail running, I went through the usual progression of ultras: first a 50K, eventually a 50-miler, then a 100K. One by one, distances that once seemed crazy became real. But the 100-miler was still an unknown, and I felt like I couldn’t consider myself a true ultrarunner until I did one. The only problem was that my training never seemed to be enough for that benchmark distance. While it was easy for me to go out…

I’ve had an old, yellowed, hand-lettered sign posted in my gym for about 15 years. It reads, “If you train like everyone else you can expect results like everyone else.” Those words—an invitation to think outside the box—have shaped my approach to coaching for longer than that sign has hung there. Training outside the box is a philosophy that encourages curiosity and creativity, and without it there would be no Training for the New Alpinism. There would be no Uphill Athlete.I have trained for a range of endurance sports at a high level myself—swimming, cross-country skiing, alpine climbing—and I have…

My recent solo of the Great Trango Tower isn’t the biggest or most difficult thing I have done, but it is the most meaningful. I climb without a rope all the time around Colorado, and I have climbed mountains by myself, but for me soloing Great Trango Tower represents the next level: a 20,000-foot mountain in the middle of Pakistan, and I was up there by myself. I came back to base camp and came down from my high, and I realized the magnitude of what I had done. I had an alone moment on a huge mountain in the…

Historically, runners have always spoken about and compared their training in terms of “mileage.” Counting miles alone seems a rather crude way to account for the myriad and complex effects training has on the body, especially today with the ability to track heart rate, pace, and even running power. None of that withstanding, runners still largely track their training by tallying up miles run per week.The reason for this is simple: When it comes to endurance, volume trumps intensity. And this is especially true in long-distance running.* * *Every foot strike results in a shock load to the musculoskeletal system…

Ever since we began getting emails in response to Training for the New Alpinism, there is one question in particular that has come up more than any other. Mountain athletes want to know how to find a balance between conventional responsibilities such as work, family, or school and their desire to be in the mountains. Some people are constrained by location, some by energy, and others by time. Regardless of the individual situation, these inquiries tend to share one thing in common: they usually come from folks who want to cram a week’s worth of activity into one or two…

Uphill Athlete received this story from British climbers Malcolm Bass, Guy Buckingham, and Paul Figg after they made the first ascent of the remote Janhukot (6,805 meters). We thought we would write to you to say thank you for sharing so much inspiration, and so much distilled knowledge and experience, through Training for the New Alpinism and the Uphill Athlete website and forum. I am writing this from our base camp on the side of the Gangotri glacier in India where we sit enjoying the afterglow of having made the first ascent of Janhukot, a remote, technical 6,800-meter peak 19…

Caveat: What follows is not a substitute for professional advice. These ideas have been accumulated over dozens of years of dealing with our own injuries and those of our athletes. Over those years we’ve developed some very general suggestions on the subject that we’d like to share. Every athlete and every injury is different, so making blanket recommendations is risky. We put forth these suggestions knowing that they help in most cases, but maybe not yours. Remember that there is no substitute for in-person, hands-on evaluation by a sports rehab professional. If you are a runner, skier, or climber, and…

In 2017, I was standing on a metaphorical plateau that spanned nearly seven years. I had reached the peak of my technical rock climbing and ski mountaineering while still in my 20s, and I wasn’t perceptibly improving as a 36-year-old. Granted, I was still amassing memorable mountain adventures, more work as a ski and rock guide, and more inspiration than ever before to explore technical terrain in wild places. But alongside the good things were the inevitable effects of aging in tandem with years of physical work: achy knees and back, fatigue, slower recovery, and many unfulfilled dreams. Something needed…