What is the maximum reasonable long run for a college runner?

I'd say right around 3 hours. That might be 21-24 miles for most D1 guys.

William Broad wrote:

I'd say right around 3 hours. That might be 21-24 miles for most D1 guys.

You think most D1 guys do their long runs at 7:30-8:00 pace?

18 miles.

The Central Catholic XC Team runs 18 mile long runs.

Farthest I went in college was 18 at conversational pace. During the season we usually did around 14-15 on Sunday morning after racing on Sat.

Junior year I did 18 regularly and felt it was a bit more than necessary, dropped to 16 senior year. Our coach was flexible on that but nobody did more than 18.

My reasoning was that there's no point in teaching the body to burn fat when the goal race is 10k XC, and you don't want to wear yourself out for the quality days. 15 makes sense if you're running 85+ a week anyway, but I'm not sure how much benefit you get beyond that. Over 20miles / 2 hours seems excessive to me.

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William Broad wrote:

I'd say right around 3 hours. That might be 21-24 miles for most D1 guys.

You think most D1 guys do their long runs at 7:30-8:00 pace?

Long runs are supposed to be slow paced, no?

Thanks for the responses LRers. That comment surprised me a bit.

I'll respond to this issue here.

I was surprised at the 21-24miles in 3 hours, there is no way d1 runners that are capable of doing runs this long would ever do a REAL long run this slow. I say REAL because most runners that have run for a long time run at various paces and it is entirely plausible that many d1 runners have run a 8 min pace for 20+ miles, however, if this was their prescribed weekly long run I doubt it would be this slow.

A possible exception might be a run where altitude and hills and heat are combined which could cause even a very talented runner to run around 7:30-8 min pace.

Tigras and Bears wrote:

Thanks for the responses LRers. That comment surprised me a bit.

I'll respond to this issue here.

I was surprised at the 21-24miles in 3 hours, there is no way d1 runners that are capable of doing runs this long would ever do a REAL long run this slow. I say REAL because most runners that have run for a long time run at various paces and it is entirely plausible that many d1 runners have run a 8 min pace for 20+ miles, however, if this was their prescribed weekly long run I doubt it would be this slow.

A possible exception might be a run where altitude and hills and heat are combined which could cause even a very talented runner to run around 7:30-8 min pace.

Thanks for the response, I'm in HS still so I am not familiar with the paces they run in college yet. What pace would you say is a typical long run, around 18 miles, for D1 run at? Assuming ideal conditions. Thanks again

22 miles. I only remember running longer than that once in college, I did a 3.5 hour run just to see how far I could go. A lot of weekends, I stopped at 20.

I'm not sure the 20-22 mile runs helped, it wasn't until senior year that I could maintain a fast pace for that.

In McDonnell's book he talks about a 14 miler on Sundays - treated as a hard workout and run at 6 minute pace - sometimes as fast as 5:30 pace. He backed this down from an 18 miler that they used to do. The Hogs had some great 10K and cross runners. Imagine how good you have to be to do a Sunday run at that pace. It takes tremendous talent or years of build up to be able to consistently run long runs at that pace in the midst of weeks that also have two other hard sessions.

One of the things you need to realize is that an 18-year-old freshman is not capable (on average) of what a 22 year old senior or a 23-year-old red shirt senior is.

That said an average (by letsrun standards) d1 team probably would do an 18 miler around 6:20-6:45 pace assuming it is flat, this would be a hard effort but they should still be able to wake up the next day and go for an easy morning run (same pace, but maybe 7-8 miles)

A hard, almost all out effort, would be around 5:30-5:45 pace--most wouldn't be able to run more than a few miles the day after this.

People seemed to agree with my suggestion that low 20s is probably the max for college, so others would probably agree with me on this that if you're an incoming highschool junior or senior the longest run you could possibly need is about 15-16 miles, you are less physically mature than college runners and you're training for a shorter race. The pace for something like this if you are an elite runner (9:20 2 mile or better) would probably be at ~6:50 for a medium/hard effort, and 6:20-30 for a killer run.

Can you explain why you think a college runner needs to run for three straight hours? Practically a marathon. I'd like to hear the reason behind this claim.

The OP asked for a maximum, so I thought 3 hours was a good limit. I wouldn't tell someone to do it every week.

By all means, run no longer than 2 or 2.5 hours, I really don't think the extra time would kill anyone though.

Also, would somebody explain the thinking that an 8k or 10k runner would even need to go 17 or 18 miles? What's the science behind this? What do you think somebody would get out of this workout? What's the purpose?

Tigras and Bears wrote:

At what point is it going to be too long.

My personal guess is low 20s should be the max for all college runners that aren't training for an even longer than 10k. Obviously, some college athletes might be into ultras, but let's assume they max out at 10k.

Please go ahead and provide a pace that you imagine this max distance long run to being run at.

Go ahead and ask 20yo Andrew Miller how long is too long:

18-22-23

Anything more...beats you up.

20-25% of weekly mileage is a pretty good rule of thumb.

Same as it is for everyone else - 20% of total weekly mileage.

Gerry Lindgren did 80 miles long runs; that seemed to work for him.