I'm an 18yo college sophomore for a small D3 school. Over the summer, I got my first real aerobic base in. For the past few years, I have always run all of my base runs way too fast and been burnt out by the time the actual season comes around.
However, this past summer, I think I did it right. I did almost all of my runs between 6:45-7:15. I also had some slow runs at 7:45+ pace and a few mile repeat sessions on the track and a few short tempo runs.
One of my staples for the summer was my long run, which I did at about 6:45-6:55 pace. I started off at 11 miles, and by the end of the summer, I was doing 15 mile long runs without serious fatigue. I'd say my mileage was about 65-70 mpw by the end of the summer and I felt (and am still feeling) really good.
The problem is this:
My coach is having us do our long run today, but it is "only" 10 miles. That is a good number for most of my team, but I'm worried that I will lose my aerobic fitness by only doing 2/3 of what I normally do for my long run. By the end of this summer, I was doing 10 mile daily runs in-between workouts and feeling good. My coach has a history of improving the runners that he gets over the season, but I'm just worried about losing the aerobic fitness I've gained over the past summer.
He didn't give us a long run last weekend, and I was ok with that, figuring that one week off of a long run couldn't be too bad. However, if I only do 10 today, there will be a 3 week gap between my last 15 miler and our next long run(which may only be 11 or 12). I really don't want to start off the season by doing extra miles behind my coach's back, but my one secret weapon going in to this season has been my weekly long run, and I feel like that is being neglected.
What should I do? Maybe I am an idiot and I shouldn't do long runs during the actual season, but I figured someone on LR would know.