Doubts about the 3 hour LR

i wonder if running bros do 3 hr long runs...like that globerg guy ...they definitely have a lot of gear when they do them, carry the entire hudson river in the back of their running vest for it...flat brim ciele hat

Pros have 40K long runs, they just happen to be fast enough to complete them faster than 3 hours.

That's because they'd be covering like 30 miles! For the 8-830min/mile folks ~3 hours barely only gets you to 20-22.

For a 245 guy or gal 3 hours is a bit much whether you're at altitude and slowed down or sea level, doesn't matter. It's a bit much.

Unless they are competitive marathoners 40k is way too much .... and 3:00 hours is way too slow.

Lots of 2:12 and faster Americans and 2:28 and faster women americans get up to 2:45-3:00 for their longest long run covering 25 or 26 miles. And then they have several long runs around 2:00-2:20 covering around 20-22 miles. Generally you want one or at most two long runs in that 2:50-3:00 range, and quite a few others in the 2:00-2:40 range.

"Everybody has to run the same distance on race day." - Jonathan Savage

Adrenaline might be able to carry a 3:00 or faster runner into uncharted territory, but slower runners probably need some direct experience running longer than 2.5 hours in one go if they're going to successfully run a marathon.

All the conventional wisdom (e.g. never run more than 2.5 hours or more than 25% of your miles in one run) tends to come from faster runners, and coaches who work mainly with faster runners.

It says a lot that elite ironman triathletes regularly cover race-day swim and bike segments in training. Sometimes they'll even go beyond race-day distances.

But they never come close to 26.2 miles in training.

They have figured out what many on this thread haven't. Running long distances is extremely taxing on your body. Far more taxing than swimming and biking. It's just not worth all that risk to run 3 hours. Especially for someone only going 5,-7 hours a week like most hobby joggers running 4 hour marathons.

I favor 3+ hour runs or even ultra marathons during a base training period. I got really strong doing this one summer. I didn't do much speed but would put in a ton of easy miles and a couple of 50ks. But at around 12 weeks out, I would cut those down so i could be recovered enough to fit in long intervals and a tempo run during the week. Every few weeks, i'd put in a 15-16 mile run with some MP knowing it would wipe me out for a couple of days.

It would depend on what your pacing is like for the 3hr long run. If you're running faster than 6:55, you're going to run a full marathon (3:00 = 6:54/mile). If you're slowing yourself down to 7:30-8:00/mile it's going to put you 22-24 miles for total distance run. Not a bad plan if your goal is to keep the heart rate down and just focus on efficiency and time on the feet.

2:40 is 6:05/mile and 2:35 is 5:54/mile. If you're throwing in any kind of pace work for more than 3-4 miles though you're going to be hitting much closer to marathon distance by the end. Not really necessary to hit that distance in a training session before actually running that distance in a race.

2h steady LR is better than going too easy for 3h🤣

3h jogging your ITB won’t like it that’s for sure!

Just do 2 h 30 min run and run faster.