Vincent Bouillard has accomplished the improbable. Winning UTMB while maintaining a full-time job, Bouillard has proven those with limited time, can still find ways to be successful within the athletic world. Without a sponsorship in place with COROS, Bouillard agreed to share his strategy and provide insights that might help others become more efficient with their time. This plan consists of a clear and consistent weekly training focus, tools to keep him on track, and immense support from his wife Kamilah. Below we will take you through how Bouillard sets up his training while operating as a Product Engineer for Hoka, so you too can maximize your potential outside of your daily work demands.

Bouillard's Typical Training Week

Bouillard's Training Follows a Similar Pattern Each Week.

Bouillard keeps his training similar from week-to-week. This not only allows for consistency, but also flexibility for when other opportunities arise in his personal life.

Each week consists of:

• 1-2 days of intensity with intervals ranging 8-20 minutes in duration (tempo/threshold)
• 1 cross training day generally meant to add more volume without the impact on his legs (bike)
• 1-2 Strength/Stretching sessions for injury prevention
• Zone 2 running to obtain weekly volume

Bouillard notes, "It doesn’t matter what day I do my intensity or cross training as its blurred into the bigger picture, but I can adjust as needed. I can shift this around as needed to accommodate my schedule and how I feel"

Bouillard's Target Focus for Each Week

Bouillard's Weekly Training Load For 2024

Having his consistent, yet flexible plan in place, Bouillard aims for a 10% increase in weekly training load. This provides a sustainable approach to fitness improvements. "I use the Training Load Metric to make sure that I'm actually increasing my fitness each week. I will work backwards from my key event, and map out a target training load for each week that I aim to hit."

While the plan is designed for weekly improvements, work responsibilities, travel, and life commitments often require adjustments to his approach. "I look at the training load I had from the week, and then adapt from there and plan accordingly going forward. I have had my training load dialed in since December of last year."

Why Training Load Instead of Distance?

As many athletes know, not all kilometers or miles require the same effort. To keep things simple, Bouillard only focuses on this key metric to ensure his fitness is building.

"I look at the weekly activity and load to see how it trends week-over-week.  I tend to follow 4-weeks of increase and 1 week recovery. This is a good indicator to look at instead of kilometers or vert as it shows what my body is truly experiencing...It also helps me understand cycling efforts so I don't override on my cross-training days"  

Different Focus Throughout the Year

Bouillard's Base Fitness 2023-2024. Base Fitness is a Rolling 42-Day Average of Training Load

Bouillard focused much of his year on training for UTMB. Leveraging data from the past year, he put a plan in place to support a peak at the correct time. For those working a full-time job, the takeaway is that you can still get value out of lower periods of the year, if they create a foundation for your peak season of competition.

Bouillard follows three simple principles to build performance while maintaining his 40+ hour per week career:

#1 - Start the year by setting a goal regarding overall fitness

#2 - Set weekly training load targets

• Maintain formula of intensity, cross training, strength/stretching, consistent Zone 2 running

#3 - Adjust weeks as needed for other commitments, get back to 10% increase when possible.

Community Support

Vincent Bouillard Celebrates with Wife Kamilah and Support Crew

For this level of performance, it will require support from those around you. Bouillard noted that his work is very understanding of his goals, but that he is also very understanding of his work commitments. They have a good mutual understanding, and that he doesn't allow his training to affect his approach to work. "Sometimes I will have early meetings or late meetings given time differences, but this allows me other times throughout the day to do what's needed."

Beyond work, Bouillard shares his life with his wife, manages travel, friendships, and other social obligations. "I talk with Kamilah often about our schedule, both work and training related. It's important that we plan ahead so we can do all the things we want. She is supportive of my aspirations and goals with running. In return, I want to be just as aware and realistic with how much time my training takes away from our schedule as we have so much more we want to achieve outside of just work or running...it's a balancing act that goes both ways."

What Bouillard credits his success to is always being able to adapt his schedule, which makes it more time-efficient. While it takes coordination across many individuals, strong communication and knowing exactly what he needs to do when, this flexibility allows him to be successful across multiple area's of his life. "When I have time to train, I know exactly what I'm doing because I planned it out well in advance. I get the work done, and then it's over. If something pops up unexpected, then I know I can adjust given how my weekly training schedule is set, and then get back into my plan the following week."

Other Metrics for Success

Beyond Bouillard's approach to training, there are other key metrics he views throughout the year to maximize his efficiency each week.

Recovery

Bouillard's Intensity Trend 2023-2024. Intensity Trend Shows the Fatigue of Recent Training vs Longterm Fitness

Bouillard routinely checks in on his recovery to ensure he can sustain his day-to-day life. Having had success in the sport for many years, he treats it more as a reminder vs an all-or-nothing metric. " I don’t take it as 100% I should do what my watch tells me, but I use it as an indicator. I treat it like a friend telling me, you look tired. It’s been far more precise as my training has been very consistent."

Sleep

2023-2024 Sleep

Beyond training stress, Bouillard understands the importance on sleep and the impact it has on his daily routine. "This is very useful for me in my job, training, travel, etc. I have historically not been a good sleeper, so this is a very useful tool for me to ensure that I’m recovering properly. If My sleep goes down, everything starts to fall apart."

Stress

Aug 2024 Stress

While Bouillard put a large focus into his training, he also aims to maximize his taper. Leveraging the Daily Stress metric, Bouillard aims to reduce stress as much as possible leading into big events. "I look at this while I’m tapering. I find this really helpful as I’m trying to be in the low numbers through taper week to ensure I don’t build any daily stress."

2024 UTMB Game Plan

Just like his approach to training, Bouillard planned in advance his UTMB race strategy. Having learned this from good friend Thibault Garrivier (professional ultra runner), Bouillard ditched his old flash cards he would use for course information and created the course in the COROS Route Planner. "When loading the course, I took the time to label all of the waypoints with the aid stations plus my time goals. I also made codes for my fueling plan. I would change between the two based on my nutritional needs and historical times from the past that I knew were strong."

UTMB Performance

Bouillard's 2024 UTMB Heart Rate and Power

Having executed his 2024 training goals, and monitoring key metrics along the way, Bouillard set out with a goal to evenly pace the entire UTMB Course. Given his numbers in training, and having experience as a cyclist, he relied mostly on power to pace his effort. "Having pace on my watch isn't something I wanted during this race. I have such a long history in the sport that If I look down and see a number, it can play games with my mind. Power however feels more relaxed to me, and gives me a better indicator on the consistency of my effort. So even though my heart rate was high early due to the excitement, I knew that it was okay because my power was in the range I wanted."

As can be seen in the graph above, Bouillard was able to maintain his steady power throughout the entirety of the race. "During the last few climbs, everyone is hurting. I felt good, but I could also tell I had been out there for a while. Looking down at my watch and seeing the same power, I knew I was in a good spot as regardless of how I felt, I was still putting out similar effort late into the race...Also, later in the race heart rate tends to become flat, so power was the best indicator I had to gauge how I was performing."

Overall UTMB Stats:

Time: 19:54:23

Avg HR: 134 bpm

Max HR: 174 bpm

Avg Power: 207 watts

Final Thoughts From Bouillard On Work-Life Balance

“You don’t have to be a professional athlete to train like a professional athlete”
- Mario Fraioli.

"The meaning behind this is that professional athletes have a full time job of their own, part of which is to focus on all the little things that constitute what is often called “invisible training” (daily sleep and nutrition/hydration, consistent strength/stretch, proper recovery, etc.) By adopting this “pro athlete” mindset and treating training as such, you are a lot more likely to set ambitious goals and thoughtful plans to achieve them, no matter what fitness level you are at and how much time you have on the calendar. It is all about balancing, planning and committing to the plan."

COROS and Vincent Bouillard

Vincent Bouillard is the 2024 UTMB Champion. Having leveraged the product from training to recovery, and planning to execution, it's safe to say technology played an impactful role in making his athletic life more efficient. Leveraging the power of the COROS APEX 2 Pro along with the COROS Heart Rate Monitor, COROS App, and COROS Training Hub, Vincent was able to maximize the time he had outside of other responsibilities. We congratulate Vincent on this incredible achievement and thank him for sharing this message with runners around the world.