As I've written in UltraMental and Guide #1, the biggest hurdle in successfully using low-volume, high intensity training when preparing for endurance events is convincing yourself that you're prepared. It takes time, practice, and, well, evidence before you can be completely confident that the physical platform (your body) that you're able to develop of such a program can, with the right input from the mind, get you through such arduous undertakings in a manner that is satisfactory given your ambitions. Sure, a few folks out there will have greater ambitions (podiums in big races) but only a very very few will have those ambitions and the will to go beyond where simple HIT for endurance would take them, if consistently and genuinely applied.

This mental challenge of believing in your capabilities given your training is very, very real, too. Your body will only go where your mind will follow, regardless of how fit you are. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation--if you are mentally strong, you can go further and get fitter. When you go further and get fitter, you become mentally stronger. For those trying to use HIT to get into endurance efforts, this presents a bit of a problem initially--without bigger efforts and a confidence in ones ability to 'make it through', doubt alone will often derail efforts regardless of fitness. To overcome this problem, I recommend a steady diet of gradually longer, fast and hard efforts in training combined with periodic races/events at distances that approach 'big goal efforts,' several times a year. The fast and hard stuff will be included in the training volume suggested in the guide, whereas the periodic races/events (I recommend about three to four a year as way of getting your 'legs' under you) will not.

In order to keep overall volume down and still allow progressively longer training runs, some weeks will feature less than one hour of training time. Adjacent weeks will then feature slightly greater training volume, so that the average load per week is one hour. For example, using a three week training cycle, you might run 40 minutes the first week, 30 minutes the second week, then 110 minutes the last week. This last week can now include a run of half marathon length (or longer), and in my opinion, being able to 'train' to the half marathon length is all that is really needed to achieve success and age-group performance in much longer races. Couple this training with those regular races at longer distances and you'll gradually learn the 'hard knocks' of ultra's all while getting faster and of course--due to your low volume training--getting to the start line healthy and uninjured!