Is it even worth doing long runs in the summer time?

weak mind.

What you did here is decide that you don’t want to do long runs, and then you made up a BS “physiological” excuse to justify your laziness. That’s fine; just realize that this is what you’re doing.

Brilliant reasoning. Living where I do, I’d be running 2 months out of the year, tops.

Suck it up.

I was always religious about doing my long runs no matter how hot and humid it was. Now I think that maybe if I had it to do over again I'd be bit less fervent when it was really miserable. A friend of mine is a big Lydiard guy who did a lot of training with Bill Baillie so you know long runs were important for him. But he was going to school in Arkansas and Baillie told him not to bother with long runs when it was typical southern summer weather, that they'd most likely make him sick. So he broke the runs into two segments.

I've also read an interview with John Tuttle. He was living in Florida in the months before his 2:10 at New York. He said that he was running twice a day and getting to about 90 mpw but never going beyond 9 miles in a single run because of the heat and humidity. Come September when it cooled a bit he did two or three 20 milers. So I think you'd be okay if you covered the distance of your long runs but doing it in two runs until the weather is more tolerable.

Long runs are overrated. If you’re already doing decent mileage, you’re getting plenty of aerobic stimulus just from your regular runs. If I’m doing 30 minutes in the am and 60-90 minutes in the pm every day, the idea that I’m going to be aerobically underdeveloped because I never do a 2 hour run is moronic.

PS

I would not recommend substituting speed for distance, i.e., don't do a hard 75 minutes, do the 75 minutes as if it was your long run, then do a second session later on that will get you to the same time/distance as you'd have if you were doing your long run.

As you're going to get hammered here for not being tough enough, I will add that 80 or so probably isn't hot enough for a long run to be more than a bit unpleasant for most people unless it's also seriously humid. I did a couple hours once on a 100 degree day outside Denver and it was okay, not great, but okay, and I am NOT a fan of hot weather.

I've been the same way about long runs. Always doing one really long run (18 miles or longer) and doing another 2-3 medium long runs (12-16 miles) throughout the week. But yesterday (it wasn't a long run, but I tried to do a steady 10 miler as I have a half marathon coming up here in a few weeks) just had me drenched in sweat/feeling dehydrated and I was thinking to myself I wonder what happens to me when I double the distance? It can't be good, can it? As I live in the south and not only is it 90+ degrees outside it is also high humidity.

Thank you again for your insights, I'll put less emphasis long runs.

Side note: I've always thought that one reason Alberto Salazar went down hill was that he tried too hard to get ready for the 84 Olympic marathon heat. Didn't he move to Houston for that build up? And I've always thought that had a bad long term effect on his performance. Plus, he has stated that he thought the Duel in the Sun took a lot out of him. Wasn't that Boston unseasonably warm?

Giving up on parts of a training plan is the 1st step to a mediocre race. Mainly because psychologically you know you cut corners.

Is it even worth doing long runs in the summer time wrote:

I was thinking about this this morning. Has grinding out long runs during the summer negatively effecting me? With all the fluid loss and physiological effects. I think during the summer from now on I'll do a hard tempo instead. If it is over 80 degrees I'm going to limit my runs to no more than 75 minutes. Thoughts?

Discus.

Long runs are not sacrosanct, if fact, they are the last piece of the training puzzle you should focus on. Beating yourself into the ground defeats the purpose of long runs. Wait until the Summer heat abates, then go ahead with them.

malmo wrote:

Is it even worth doing long runs in the summer time wrote:

I was thinking about this this morning. Has grinding out long runs during the summer negatively effecting me? With all the fluid loss and physiological effects. I think during the summer from now on I'll do a hard tempo instead. If it is over 80 degrees I'm going to limit my runs to no more than 75 minutes. Thoughts?

Discus.

Long runs are not sacrosanct, if fact, they are the last piece of the training puzzle you should focus on. Beating yourself into the ground defeats the purpose of long runs. Wait until the Summer heat abates, then go ahead with them.

Thank you Malmo for your advice and insights.

I hate running in the heat also. Consequently, I run about 1 or 2 hours just before sundown on a well shaded course. I have to drive 15 mins to get there but thats OK. Shade makes a big difference. I've run several years on that schedule and never had a run that was too hot to trot.

Is it even worth doing long runs in the summer time wrote:

I was thinking about this this morning. Has grinding out long runs during the summer negatively effecting me? With all the fluid loss and physiological effects. I think during the summer from now on I'll do a hard tempo instead. If it is over 80 degrees I'm going to limit my runs to no more than 75 minutes. Thoughts?

Discus.

Big marathons like the Olympic marathon are usually held in the summer during warmer conditions. If you're not trained for the heat you won't do well in the marathons that count. This type of thinking is why US marathoners don't perform well in the Olympics.

I live in Houston, where the dew point during the summer is consistently in the mid to high 70’s due to the oppressive humidity here. Long runs are brutal and take a lot out of you. Does it make you a stronger runner when the weather cools in the autumn? I don’t known if there’s any scientific basis for that from a physical standpoint, but i think it significantly helps me psychologically. It ups my threshold for discomfort and it doesn’t faze me when a race is run under less than optimal conditions. There’s a value to that, but you have to weigh that against how awful you feel the day or two after a long run under those conditions.

The reason we don't do well at the Olympic Marathon I believe is because of the process. First you have to qualify, then run the trails, then if you have anything left in you go run the race of your life. That's way to much. Just pick a team.

As for not running long runs in the summer I guess I should be relieved by some of these stupid posts. Even the one by malmo. Living in the south I now only have to run only two or three 20 milers a year.

P.S.

Don't believe that crap about Tuttle. One interview says he did this and one says he did that. If you want to know the truth go get it from the horses mouth not someone's azz. He will tell you . He is a real nice guy , too nice.

2:18 wrote:

The reason we don't do well at the Olympic Marathon I believe is because of the process. First you have to qualify, then run the trails, then if you have anything left in you go run the race of your life. That's way to much. Just pick a team.

As for not running long runs in the summer I guess I should be relieved by some of these stupid posts. Even the one by malmo. Living in the south I now only have to run only two or three 20 milers a year.

Your first point paragraph made sense. Your second paragraph didn't.

Do you think East African runners train as hard as Southern Americans do in the summer?

Or is their environment somewhat cooler and less humid to the point that even the altitude doesn't slow them down and deplete them anywhere near as much as summer running in the southern states?

2:18 wrote:

P.S.

Don't believe that crap about Tuttle. One interview says he did this and one says he did that. If you want to know the truth go get it from the horses mouth not someone's azz. He will tell you . He is a real nice guy , too nice.

Do you know otherwise? I don't really have a way to get the truth from the horses mouth here and I don't know why he'd have told the interviewer something that wasn't true. I'd be very interested in what you know and how you know it. To me, the idea of not doing much in the line of long runs doesn't seem far fetched. I have a friend who got third at New York once with no runs longer than eight miles.

Boston '82 was very warm. I don't think Salazar was ever the same runner after that race and I think the same was true of Beardsley. Jim Peters was essentially wrecked after his collapse in the heat at Vancouver in the '54 Commonwealth Games. On the other hand, Jack Fultz won Boston in '76 in the hottest Boston ever and was back with a 2:11 in '78.

I'm not sure we all handle heat and humidity the same way. I don't think I ever adapted to running in the heat as I heard would happen as the summer went on. I always felt more drained by and thought I handled it less well in late August than in early July. But maybe that was more mental. I may just have been sick of it.

The four legendary heat trainers that I can think of were Christine Clark, Buddy Edelen, Ron Daws, and Benji Durden. Most of them bundled up and ran in hot weather in sweats. Edelen did it in weather that was cool and was trying to simulate hot weather. Daws got the idea from Edelen and as he described it, both of them piled the sweats on every other day and just ran in normal gear on the other days in locations where the weather was generally cool or even chilly. Daws specifically mentions the need for recovering from the ultra hot runs so neither he nor Edelen were exposed to the sort of daily steam bath that you're getting in the South. Clark was running on a treadmill in a heated room in Alaska so she also was not dealing with oppressive heat round the clock. I don't know what Durden's frequency was.

The Finns always did well at the Boston Marathon back in the days when Finns did well generally. Most of the time they came straight from their winter, it can extend to April easily there, and managed to run well at Boston even when the weather was hot. In 1975 I was in Finland with a British friend and staying with a Finn who'd been second at Boston in 1964. We asked him and some other runners there how they managed to run well in warm weather when they had trained in the cold. Did they do anything special, we asked, to adapt to heat like wear extra sweat suits. The question seemed to puzzle them.

They'd just talk about their mileage and the sorts of workouts they did but didn't seem to grasp the idea of doing anything special to adjust to a hot day in Boston. I got the impression that they were just so cold from training through their winters that running for a couple hours in seventy degree weather was sort of a treat.

At any rate, despite being a Lydiard guy, I'm definitely with malmo on this one. You can find examples of people running well at the marathon without doing any long runs so I think having a few weeks without one is not going to be a problem for you as long as you keep the overall mileage up.

Just wake up earlier and do your long run when it's still relatively cool out. I live in Mexico in Southern Baja and during the very long and hot summers, you'll find many (most) runners out and about at 5:00AM. But hey, if you don't want to do your long runs then don't do them. It sounds like you've already made up your mind anyway and that this thread is just an exercise in confirmation bias.