Question: A friend of mine, a junior, is running an ultramarathon (100 mile race in Arizona) in November. His current mileage is between 130-150 miles a week, along with 2 hour lifting sessions a day. He was wondering what advice could be found regarding cross training and prepping for such an event. My friend was overweight as a child, his football coach dad starved him back into a normal weight range, and ever since his baseball/football highschool career, "Tom" has been running and working out on a high-intensity basis. His two-mile time has gone from 14:00 to 10:20 since he came to west point, but I see the signs of someone overcompensating and overtraining to "make-up" for his poor health in the past. He really is on a route to self-destruction and injury, because when he has a twinge or "hurt" he merely just trains harder and longer the next day. I often run long runs with him, and he is a very positive, motivated individual and good athlete. His questions to me include: how to eat properly to prepare for the ultramaration (right now he will not touch anything fried or unhealthy, he is trying to "maintain" weight, but he will not eat foods such as meatball sandwich). his other question was: "Is two weeks enough recovery time after an ultramarathon to do another?" i think what will happen is he will get injured bad and learnthe hard way that he is over-comopensating. Can i tell him something to avoid that path?