Long Run as a proportion of Weekly Mileage

I've just seen a comment from someone suggesting that the long run shouldn't make up more than 1/3 of your weekly mileage. Something I haven't heard before. I've always believed that the long run is the most important part of your training.

Presently I'm trying to get a sub 50min 10k and a sub 2hr half. I'm 3 or 4 minutes away from both.

Over the winter I was running 3 sessions a week. 4miles at 8 min/mile, 6miles at 9min/mile and 13miles at 10.5 min/mile. BUT this means that my long run is 56% of my weekly mileage. I should really add a 4mile recovery run too.

I want to retain the 13mile LSR and I'm going to have to increase it to 15 and 18 milers later in the summer in time for a full marathon in November.

Any thoughts? Do I really need to fit in another 16miles somehow? It seems to be working as is at the moment. If it ain't broke....

I am interested in the answers to this tim, as broke bothe those barriers last year running similar distance and have now tried to up my game to move on from a plateau.  Whist its true that you should not break something thats working, its also true that unless you change something, little will change. 

I too do a long run of about 2hrs and am extending that at the moment to meak at 20 Miles for abingdon which will be my first marathon. 

My advice would be. 

a) run on percieved effort rather than pure m/m targets for each run.

b) add two 30 min runs ( 25% increase in weekly mileage) after the long run and after the faster run. Do these very easy pace. This will help recovery in the legs and add mileage. 

c) add a warm up mile and warm down mile to your 4 mile faster run. Also do not do the same each week.. Some weeks run the 4 miles at fartlek, sometimes as a hill repeats, sometimes as 400M repeats. this will shock the body a little and improve Vo2 - hence help you break your barriers. 

Ps - do not do all these in one go and dont assume that all I say is correct...

Good luck with breaking the bariers and with the marathon

I'm following a 10k training plan in Paula Radcliffe's book at the moment. I'm running four times a week; tempo run of 6-7 miles (4-5 at tempo), hill work / fartlek for 45 minutes or so, 5 mile easy run and a ten miler.  My long run is therefore approximately 40% of my weekly mileage. 

I've seen recommendations for your long run not to be more than 25% of your weekly mileage, you've saying you've seen it shouldn't be more than 1/3. A lot of the advice I've gleaned from this site is reiterated in Paula's book (and another I've read) but the 25% / 1/3 rule isn't there, so perhaps ignore it?

There are two reasons for keeping the lsr at the lowest % of your weekly training you can:

1. It makes the distance in the lsr feel more reasonable because you are already adjusted to running lots of miles and makes the recovery less of a problem

2. If you are less tired then your form will be better and thus you are less likely to get injured

However, increasing your weekly mileage to accomodate your lsr is the wrong way around. You need to run the lsr your weekly mileage will allow and increase both gradually. 

Let me get Moraghan's training for the right distance thread which deals with lots of these points about a balanced training week and building up to good mileage. 

Here you go this is the more in depth one (there was also one in the beginners section)

I think it boils down to what you want to get out of running and how much you can put in.  If you desperately want to complete a marathon and can only run 30 miles a week for whatever reason its not a great idea for your longest run to only be 10 miles.. Just know that you wont run as good a time or you'll hurt a lot lot more doing it.

Blue legs forever wrote (see)

I think it boils down to what you want to get out of running and how much you can put in.  If you desperately want to complete a marathon and can only run 30 miles a week for whatever reason its not a great idea for your longest run to only be 10 miles.. Just know that you wont run as good a time or you'll hurt a lot lot more doing it.

Long run at 25% is a good guide and if you have strong opinions about the importance of the long run then one would have thought you would also have strong views on the importance of overall mileage!

If you really want to train optimally then running 3 or 4 times a week isn't going to be anywhere near it anyway, so in that instance I'd suggest you don't worry too much about long run proportions and any rules etc.

I can't help thinking the long run (as separate from total volume) is massively overrated for 10k / 5k training and it's massively underrated for marathon training.  Doing just one 20 miler in marathon training isn't going to cut it if you have any reasonable time aspirations.

What I mean by this is you could run very well off 60 miles a week with a long run of 10m (16%) for a 10k and run very well in a marathon off 60 miles a week with a long run (actually 7 of them) of 20m (33%).  However the former may be training optimally but the latter would certainly not be training optimally and you'd be better off with a volume of 80m.

P.s.  of course there's a difference between training optimally and training smartly depending on your experience / circumstances.  80m (as an example) may be optimal but if you're only running 50m at the moment it's certainly not smart!

Thanks for the responses. I missed out that once a month my long is 15miles.

I've just read the first 3 posts of Moraghan's thread I'll read the rest a bit later, it seems an increase in mileage is needed to start with, which is what I suspected but how to fit the seesions in with life is the hard bit..

I'm thinking initially this plan and add another quality session in a few weeks:

Sunday: Long 15mi
Monday: Recovery easy 4mi
Wed: Long 10mile
Friday:  Quality (2m easy + 5m quality + 0.5m easy)
Total 36.5mi

Are you not able to run on Saturdays?  I don't know if you're trying to work by the 'hard-easy' principle in your schedule above but you would be able to get away with the odd back-to-back quality effort as long as there is adequate recovery around it.  (And you build up to it sensibly...) For my debut marathon I ran 5x/wk, something like:

Sun - long run
Mon - x-train
Tue - easy 4/5M
Wed - long 10-12M
Thu - easy 4/5M
Fri - rest
Sat - tempo/marathon pace, etc 8-10M
(max 50mpw)

Simply by having more sessions, the LR ends up taking up a smaller %age of the weekly total, but I can't say I was hung up on this.

The way I look at it, the more times you run at least 4/5 miles in a week, the easier 10 miles feels... the more times you run at least 10M, the easier 20M feels... etc... hence longer runs are supported by shorter runs and the long run falls into a %age of the total.

Mr V

There are 4 principal reasons to do a long run imo:

1)  To become more efficient at using fat as fuel.

2)  To get your muscles used to having to contract for the duration of your race.

3)  To develop your aerobic fitness through mileage.

4)  To run through the stages of muscle fibre recruitment (the argument being you exhaust slow twitch fibres first so if the run is long enough you finally recruit fast twitch muscles).

The trade off on a long run being the recovery required.

For a 10k 1) and 2) are non-issues (it's important for marathons), 3) is massively important and 4) is best done through a modulation of quality session intensities imo rather than through long run duration.

However, 3) doesn't necessarily have to be done through a single long run.  Most people do it that way as it's the only way to get up to a decent mileage on 1 run a day.  Ideally I'd de-emphasise this and go for two runs a day because you can get more volume without the recovery issues involved in an extended effort.  As an example, about 65 a week with a 14m long run but two quality sessions of over 10m with quite a few doubles in an ideal world.

If you have been running a long time and can truly can knock out a 15 miler with no impact on recovery then go ahead.   But the bottom line is ideally you should be aiming for as much mileage as you can handle whilst still recovering for your quality sessions - my bet is that physically you can handle a fair bit more doing doubles and de-emphasising the long run. 

The above for a 10k focus - HM would be different.

If I were you:

-  Establish target mileage

-  2 extended quality sessions per week.

-  Doubles on quality days at the very least.

-  Divide up the remaining mileage over the remaining days with one 'long run', but with the emphasis being on organising it to optimise recovery from the quality days.

Have a play around and explore the options.

Well Mr Moraghan you do speak a lot of sense. I know there is a long thread on your coaching - over 3500 posts and I cannot say I have started on that but many of the other things I have seen you post do seem emminently sensible and practical.

 
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PhilPub wrote (see)

Are you not able to run on Saturdays?  I don't know if you're trying to work by the 'hard-easy' principle in your schedule above but you would be able to get away with the odd back-to-back quality effort as long as there is adequate recovery around it.  (And you build up to it sensibly...) For my debut marathon I ran 5x/wk, ....

I'm 42 this year and am finding the recovery days are pretty much essential.

I ran a marathon off three runs a week last year. This included 4 19mile runs. The Sundays I did the 19mi followed Fridays that I had done 10mi. Wednesdays were mixed speed work sessions. So most weeks were 30-40 miles.
 
Just to clarify. My main aim is the sub 2hour half and I'm hoping really to get a sub 50min 10k off the back of the sub 2hr training. The full marathon isn't until November. I'm sure the logic is there somewhere.

My main purpose for running is just to get out into the countryside and see stuff so doing hours of training to become a seriously fast runner doesn't appeal to me (at the moment).

Mr V - exactly, with regards to your last sentence.

Crazytown Emperor wrote (see)

moraghan my current schedule looks very similar to p&d over 85mpw schedule. BUT my shorter runs are a little bit longer and often I replace the midweek long run with cycling. i know its not ideal, but what are you views on replacing the midweek long run with cycling? the schedule has minimal amount of rest days and i feel it helps my legs having a day off from running

Assuming you're in marathon training I wouldn't be dropping the midweek long run as that's important when training for that distance.  You need a second run in the week that challenges you endurance / duration wise.

The cycling will help aerobic fitness but is no substitute for running.  If you feel you need more days off than the schedule allows then take them and accept the slight drop in mileage or do some more doubles on your longer easy days (2 * 4 miles is much easier than 1 * 8 miles). 

Rather than swapping out the MLR I think you'd be better off introducing a rest day or two and filling in the cycling mileage on one of those.  It may be that rather than having 2 quality days, a medium long and a long run it makes more sense for you to have 1 quality day, a medium long run with some quality and a long run if that enables you to maintain the mileage.

When I schedule a runner's week I always find the medium long run is the hardest to fit in whilst allowing recovery.  The answer is often to merge the MLR with a quality session.  You have to design things in a way that includes adaptation from the harder / longer sessions.

JohnnyBike - thank you Sir.