There is a particular moment in ultramarathon training that rarely gets attention, but almost every runner recognises. 

You’re not new to the process anymore, but you’re not close enough to race day to get that final surge of focus. It’s not the new exciting thing to tell your friends about, nor can you make plans for the post-race pint yet.

You’re somewhere in the middle, plodding along, getting the miles in, going through the motions.

But during this phase, there will be signals from your body, however subtle, on how the training is going physiologically. 

We’ve outlined a few things you can expect below, and what to do about it. And hey, if nothing else, it's nice to have some new stuff to think about on mile 30 of a 4am Tuesday run.

Your fitness is shifting, even if you can’t see it.

Do you notice your hair growing day by day? Do you notice your child, or cacti (for my childless brethren) gaining inches? 

Of course not. Only over time do these changes noticeably materialise. It’s the same with your fitness on the long old road to an ultramarathon race. 

By now, your body has begun to normalise the demands of long-distance running. Long runs no longer carry the same shock they once did. Many runners at this stage feel a contradiction: improving fitness alongside a growing sense of fatigue. That tension is often the natural overlap between adaptation and accumulated training load.

What matters most is not how fresh you feel on any single day, but whether your training rhythm is holding: consistent effort, appropriate recovery, and no persistent breakdown in form or wellbeing. 

To quote a recent Premier League winning manager, trust the process.

Embrace the tired. Learn from the tired.

At the halfway point in an ultramarathon programme, fatigue is feedback.

As anyone who has pulled all-nighters for both work and play will know, not all tiredness is created equal. 

When it comes to running long distances day-after-day, there is an expected, almost sluggish heaviness that comes from sustained mileage. This is literally par for the course, and will need perseverance, the right fuel and sleep routines to sustain.

Then there is the kind of fatigue that lingers, sharpens, or begins to affect how you move rather than just how you feel. This is the type of tired you listen to, share with your physio and, if necessary, change your programme accordingly. 

Your feet remember. 

Like Dorian Gray’s aging portrait in the attic, your feet keep a record of the miles and pain endured out on the road. You might be smiling, lungs pumping, feeling good, but when you get home and take off your shoes, the horror reveals itself.

By the halfway point, small patterns will begin to emerge, recurring hot spots, slight asymmetries in wear, the early signs of blister-prone zones. These are not problems to be ignored or pushed through.

If your feet are keeping score, then so should you. Take notice of how and why issues appear, then take steps to address them. Sock choices, lacing tension, insoles, skin condition after long efforts, are all key parts of the training process.

Here, wet shoes are your nemesis. Left untreated, they become a slow accumulation of friction, moisture, and breakdown, exactly the conditions that poor training feet do not recover well from.

Tools like the Atacama Shoe Dryer are often used for this purpose, providing controlled airflow to remove internal moisture without exposing footwear to excessive heat. 

In practice, this kind of routine reduces the variability in foot conditions from one run to the next, which becomes increasingly important as weekly volume builds. 

The real ultramarathon is run in the mind.

Just kidding, it's obviously ran on the road. 

But there is a specific mental mode ultramarathon runners tend to enter during the mid-point of their training. 

Familiar routes, weather getting you down, fewer milestones, and a race day that still feels an age away. Intrinsic motivation becomes less reliable here, so replace it with structure. Training sessions become non-negotiable. Say to yourself “I am an ultramarathon runner - and going out at this ungodly hour and running for hours is just what I do!”

You can go back to being you after race day.

A game of two halves.

If the first half of training is about building capacity, the second half is about holding it.

The work ahead is less about adding and more about refining: stabilising recovery, protecting the feet, simplifying decisions, and keeping conditions as consistent as possible so that adaptation can continue without interruption.

By this point, you’ve learnt a lot about your mind, body and taste in podcasts. Use those lessons (and did we mention the Atacama Shoe Dryer), to keep putting one healthy foot in front of the other, all the way to the start line.