F r o m p o w e r l i f t e r t o a l p i n e u l t r a m a r a t h o n r u n n e r , D o m C a d d e n p r o v e s s t r e n g t h a n d e n d u r a n c e c a n g o h a n d i n h a n d .

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The Italian village of Courmayeur at the foot of Mont Blanc looks like it’s straight out of a fairytale – the good type, when the Brothers Grimm were on their meds – but it is also a little intimidating. It’s not just the towering mountains that block every horizon, it’s the other runners who have come to the cradle of “sky running” – trail ultra marathons at altitude – for the Tor Des Géants. The vast bulk are grizzled Europeans who have mucked about

running, climbing and skiing mountains for so long that they look like they’re carved out of rock. I feel like I don’t belong, but then I remember I felt that way my first time in a national powerlifting competition – me, a 51kg uni student who disappeared if I turned side-on. So on the back of my hand I wrote a reminder: “YOU TRAINED FOR THIS.”

A few years back, I hobbled home from the CommonwealthPowerlifting Championships with a gold medal in my pocketand a Commonwealth open bench press record to my name.Mission accomplished – but hamstring tendons torn.

The hamstring troubles began at least a couple of monthsbeforehand, but it had been hard to tell “standard” five-day-a-week strength-training soreness from an injury that creepsup like a ghost – a ghost I didn’t want to believe was real.

Seven months of different treatments brought littleimprovement and I became more depressed. Would my legsever heal? Then one day it hit me – I could live without everdoing another squat or deadlift in my life, but I needed to beable to run again. As often occurs in life, when somethingis taken away from you, that’s when you want it the most.

To tell the truth, I was bored with powerlifting.I had travelled across the world just to lift the standardset of weights on a standard platform in some room orother. Running was different. Running can take you placesthat there is no other way to access – deep forest, remotebeaches, from the tops of mountains to the bottom of theGrand Canyon. Outside the weights rooms, there wasa whole world still to explore.

A course of PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injectionseventually helped my hamstrings heal and I could run again– but strength is addictive, especially if you’re a small guy.I couldn’t get taller and I struggled to get bigger, but it feltgood to outlift most guys in any gym.

I ran, but I made a return to powerlifting, just to prove thatI could. I competed in Strongman, then trained to run fromthe top of the Grand Canyon to the bottom and back up withmy wife. Then it was back to Strongman, then a tough 100kmbush trail race, then back to Strongman once more.

Each time I shifted the balance between strength andfitness/endurance, I felt like I managed to hold a little bitmore of both. There’s a tipping point where your bodyflips over to an adaptation for one activity extreme over the

other. It happens in the brain as much as in the muscles. Lifting for maximum strength requires you to focus all your energy and all your body tension for a few seconds. You turn on and tense up with everything you have. In long-distance trail running, you need to be relaxed, work on rhythm and hold just enough intensity and attention to your surroundings and technique that you can maintain it for hours at a time. Then there’s the sheer mental strength to push the body – just like the muscles, the brain gets conditioned to one extreme over another, whether that’s lifting a couple of hundred kilos, running up a steep hill as fast you can with a pack for two or three minutes, or running in the bush for 10 hours.

T H AT ’ S M Y B H A G

I discovered my big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) when I saw a video of the Tor Des Géants, a trail running race through Italy’s Valle d’Aosta, wedged up against France and Switzerland. The 339km course goes through ancient villages and forests, and over 25 mountain passes exceeding 2000m in altitude, all in the shadows of the “Four Giants” – Mont Blanc, Gran Paradiso, Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn. The single-stage race is often named as one of the world’s toughest ultramarathons. Only 50-60 percent of competitors ever complete the race, which boasts 31,000m of elevation gain (850m every 10km!) and knee-killing descents. Runners average less than two hours sleep a day, and most withdrawals occur because of injury, illness (usually stomach or altitude sickness) or failing to meet cut-off times along the course.

I believe everything you experience in life, good or bad, is preparation for something, so I tried to focus on all the ways my powerlifting was an advantage, rather than my lack of running experience. Each requires meticulous planning, both for the event itself and to build up, step by tiny step, to what at first looks like a bat-crap crazy goal. Operating at either extreme of the energy spectrum, both sports demand scrupulous body management– even niggles can become disastrous. The two sports demand a mental strength that pushes you through physical barriers.The big difference was in the training volume and the eating.Powerlifting is all about quality; for ultras, it’s quantity. Inpowerlifting, you recover to train; for ultras, you train to require less recovery from more volume. It’s a knife edge – and that knife is often caked in peanut butter and pizza. And cake.

T H E S T R E N G T H T O R U N

Fortunately, I’d chosen an event where strength was a realadvantage. Leg strength powers you up the ascents, but the strain on the quads coming down is enormous, too – the race has a notorious

THE TOR DES GEANTS IS A TRAIL RUNNING RACE THROUGH ITALY’S VALLE D’AOSTA, WEDGED UP AGAINST FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND.

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Clockwise, from top left: runners descend to Vallone di Youlaz facing the Rutor Glacier; a midnight pass of Col de Nannaz; runners scoff down coffee and fruit pie at Rifugio Bertone, last stop before the finish; support tent, Col Vecchia; ascending Col Malatra in flash blizzard.

Clockwise, from top left: the imposing ascent of Col Haut Pas; teetering on the edge at Col Fenêtre, above Planaval; the halfway point – Rifugio Coda; a mobile bivouac in the boulder field just below Col Entrelor; running by head torch high above Cogne. Opposite page: Dom passes Col Entrelor at 3002m elevation.

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2500m descent over more than 30km, and the bottom is littered with blown knee ligaments. Then there’s the upper body strength required to carry a 7kg backpack and use hiking poles to climb, and the core strength required to do all that on uneven terrain for some 20 hours a day.

My goal was to hold on to 85-90 percent of my maximum

strength for as long as I could. It sounds like a lot – tell a powerlifter he’ll lose 25kg off his squat and he’ll act like the four horsemen of the apocalypse are at his door. Plus I’d always been a hard gainer, so even if losing another 3-4kg was guaranteed to cut hours off my time, it still wasn’t worth it to me.

The key was to put the ego away and do what I needed, not what I wanted. The first phase of training, I lifted heavy twice a week, but for faster reps in sets of three to five with weights that I could do for five to eight reps. Conventional deadlifts gave way to sumo deadlifts, because they worked the stabilising muscles of my inner thighs more and strained the lower back less. In the second phase, the workout time came down to 45 minutes, plus core and agility work. I trained more like a bodybuilder to hold muscle weight. That meant short rest times, supersets and slow negatives. In the final three months, resistance training came through agility work and circuit training.

In the end, training around inner Sydney was never going to be quite like time on 3000m-plus mountains. It was like trying to simulate sex or death, or recreate Beethoven’s 7th Symphony using bike horns – never quite like the real thing. But I had a plan.

A M O N G T H E G I A N T S

Over the first climb – 1300m in 8km – I could see that I had good speed going up, and I continued to overtake other runners on the ascents. Crucially, I hit the best possible scenario for my first 24 hours – 70km covered, even fitting in two naps.

I went through snow and 30°C heat in the same day. I passed through everything from 2000-year-old Roman roads and bridges to hairy mountain paths, sometimes using guide ropes or climbing up rock faces on metal hooks. I waded through powdery dirt above the tree line, climbed through boulder fields, slid down talus fields and tiptoed over rocks spiked like daggers.

The terrain was brutal on feet and legs. The major checkpoints where runners could get support, sleep and medical assistance looked like war hospitals, but with better food, plus alcohol. No-one had seen this many bandaged feet since 18th Century China.

I realised the biggest risks to my race were injury and sleep deprivation, so I played it safe. I took time to look after any niggles as well as my feet and muscle stiffness. To help digestion and maximise calorie intake, I ate when I stopped. I took naps twice a day – 30-60 minutes in daytime, around 90 minutes at night. I’d come too far to not finish or let this turn into a death march – I was going to savour it.

I achieved my ultimate goal – not just finishing in the top 30 percent, but being well enough to finish with a sprint through the main street. For me, it was proof that you don’t just have to be a weights dude or a long-distance guy. We are what we train for. Strength or endurance? Hell, why not have both? ■

Dom Cadden runs Strength for Running training through Iron Grip Gym, North Sydney.

IWENT THROUGH SNOW AND 30°C HEAT IN THE SAME DAY. I PASSED THROUGH 2000- YEAR-OLD ROMAN ROADS AND HAIRY MOUNTAIN PATHS.

THESTEPSBUILD A BASE

■ I began with 5km at a time, every second day for a week, creeping up the distance over four weeks.

SPEED UP

■ On the toughest terrain of theTor, speeds can drop to 2km/h or less, but when the going gets better, you need to be fast enough create a “time buffer” – be far enough ahead of the cut-off times to allow for illness, injury or fatigue, or just to beat a snowstorm to shelter. Trainingfaster also simulates the high heart rate that comes with climbing in thin air at altitude. Myspeed sessions varied between 7-15km runs and 400-800m repeats on light trails.

BE AGILE

■ There’s a lot of rock-hopping, including at night, and punishing downhills. Gym prep for this included jumping rope and box jumps, one leg at a time, lining up four beer kegs and jumping them one after theother, and running and climbingover rocks and boulders along the foreshore at low tide.

GET MOUNTAIN FIT

■ A weekday running session would be a series of long hills (2-7 minutes each) for 60–120 minutes – then downhill as fastas possible. Running barefoot in soft sand worked the hamstrings, ankles and core more than a solid surface, plusthe energy expenditure was greater than on stable ground.

DO LONG CIRCUIT TRAINING

■ To an extent, fitness is fitness – it’s transferable from one activity to another. So as a break from running, I would do circuits with long intervals (2-3 minutes) consecutively

over 60-90 minutes. Typical stations included jumping rope, doing high box step-ups with dumbbells, cardio rowing, fast walking on a treadmill at 12-15% followed by running at 4%, walking or lunging carrying a barbell overhead, beer keg jumps, boxing rounds and “poling” – imitating the action of hiking with poles.

GO LONG

■ Long runs began on-road, more for the confidence gained from getting 50-60km under the belt. They then moved off-road to foreshore tracks and light bush for four hours at a time, progressing to increasingly gnarly and steep bush trails that peaked at 90km (13 hours). The aim was to run these at a pace that let me recover and return to normal training two days later.

BACK UP

■ I needed to build resilience so I could back up, day after day. The first step was to train 5-6 days in a row, alternating training types, but as the long runs became all-day affairs, I’d have a day’s rest before and after. A key test was four consecutive days of 20km on a hilly course. Pre-race, training peaked with three back-to-back sessions in the bush between Friday night and Sunday morning.

PREPARE FOR RARE AIR

■ I went to an altitude training gym with a 6kg backpack, setting the altitude simulation to 500m more than the highest altitude of the Tor. Starting six weeks out, I did 10 sessions, starting with weekly sessions of fast treadmill walking on incline for an hour, then alternating this with 400m runs, then finally doing longer sessions closer together at a steady pace.Ph

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