Breaking the long run rule

FALSE
A summary from Alberto Salazars training log in 1977

70 days, 130 sessions
60 doubles
10 singles
21.5% = percentage of individual runs 10 miles or longer (28 out of 130 efforts averaging 11.85 miles, range 10-15 miles)
14.2 miles = avg daily mileage
69 = number of AM runs (including Sunday long run)
7.1 miles = avg AM run
6.2 miles = avg AM run (not including long run)
61 = number of PM runs
8.3 miles = avg PM run

9 long runs (13,11,13,14,14,13,15,12,12)
13.0 miles = avg long run
15 miles = longest run. One occurrence.
Long runs = 91% of the avg daily mileage
Long runs = 13.1% of the avg weekly mileage

FROM THE TODD WILLIAMS TRAINING THREAD

Weekly mileage for the 10 weeks leading up to 1995 Gate River Run: 110-102-91-86-93-105-105-95-103-106* race week
Long runs for the 10 weeks leading up to 1995 Gate River Run: 12-8-10-10-8-11-12-10-11-10

Specific workouts: Each week I would do a track workout, hill workout and a faster road run, with some samples of those below. For each workout I ran a 3-4 mile warm-up at a sub 6:00 pace, followed by 6-150m strides and a 2 mile warm-down.

Key workouts:
1. 4xmile@4:15 with 3 minutes recovery jogs between each mile
2. Hills – 10x380 meter hill with jog back down for recovery between each
3. 8 x 1000m @2:45 with 200m jog recovery between each 1000m
4. 1600m – 1200m--800m-400m@:60-:61 pace with 400m jog recovery between each
5. 5 miles HARD road run (4:45 pace) then back to the track for 4 x 800m @2:02 – 2:04 with 400m jog recovery
6. 20 x 200m @ :30 with 200m jog recovery
7. 6 mile HARD road run then back to the track for a 4:08 mile

I ran twice a day every day, with my pace on each run never slower than 6 minutes per mile. At the completion of each afternoon run I would do 8 x 150m strides at mile race pace.

10 long runs (12-8-10-10-8-11-12-10-11-10)
10.2 miles = avg long run
12 miles = longest run. One occurrence.
Long runs = 80% of the avg daily mileage
Long runs = 13.4% of the avg weekly mileage

Sounds like you've made up your mind then. What's the point of this thread?

Yikes. Nothing like a long run question and discussion to get someone all up the feels.

Adding 3 40min runs to a schedule is way more of a commitment than a single long run of 2 hours.

Freedom of speech? Shooting the breeze?

Anyway, no point in comparing the training of professionals with regular Joe's.

I feel like Running With The Buffaloes is to blame for this romanticization and over emphasis on the weekly long run. Malmo isn’t wrong in that the it shouldn’t be done at the expense of the overall training.

People crapped on him but yea, he'd be better working on the other 6 days a week and getting good mileage, and honestly only needs like 90 min max. But I think it helped this kid mentally as well as physically.

Keep the long run shorter and make sure you're hitting your workouts and runs well the other 6 days a week.

For 5K training on a 40 mile week, I could see why one may want to incorporate a long run into their schedule. They could certainly improve with it, but I think they could improve just as much, if not more by doing something like 5 runs of 8 miles while keeping all of the other workouts.

I'm an older 60 mpw runner on 6 days and my longest run is only 10 miles. I think this works much better for 5k/10k training than doing a weekly 16 miler, for example.

So malmo, why is Al Sal’s training relevant to a 40 mpw 18 min 5K runner.

Is it possible that you took it easier on the 2hr runs than you would on the 90 min runs? You may have forced yourself into a recovery type run by going longer.

The trick is not to have the long run be so stressful that it detracts from the other six days. One of malmo's comments on this is along the lines of needing it to be proportional to your abilities and experience. I can't recall verbatim. You can't just look at numbers.

In a later post the OP mentions that he'd done 60 mile weeks in the past. A two hour run is more proportional for a 60 a week guy than for a 40 a week one. Fitness accumulates over time so someone who's run 40 mile weeks for a couple years probably can handle a two hour run than someone who's been at that level for only a couple months.

Lydiard's guys kept the long run in all year, even when they were in a low mileage phase and mostly doing anaerobic work. He thought it would slow the rate at which they lost aerobic fitness. But that sort of run was well within their limits because of the volume they did at other times of the year. Ron Clarke thought his long run was the most important run he did. But it was the other 11 or 12 runs he took during the week that allowed him to benefit from that run.

There are probably people running forty mile weeks who are fit enough to benefit from a 15 mile run and others who would be so wrecked from it that they'd spend most of the other six days recovering from it and not able to make proper use of those days,

I think malmo's point isn't to skip long runs entirely. It's that he sees many amateurs over-relying on the long run and skipping over other very important aspects of training. They do some massive long run, that is a big overreach for them, thinking they've done all they can do, while they neglect running more frequently, adequate weekly volume, consistency and proper speed work.

The classic example would be the couch-to-marathoner that runs two ten-mile runs, and a 20-miler on the weekend, barely limping the the finish of the long run that comprises 50% of their mileage. They're too fried to run at all the next two days, then struggle through their two ten-milers, too sore to do anything but semi-recover, before the cycle repeats. Then they wonder why they can't achieve their potential.

This. In the 90s people were running lower mileage as a group than had been done in the previous three decades or so and performances were not as good. The mantra had become "an interval session, a tempo run, and a long run." The other days were "recovery" days and you'd hear people say they didn't need to do all the miles people were doing a few years earlier because they had a "20" in each week. It wasn't so much that doing the "20" was bad but that it was the reason they were really just training three times a week.

To illustrate why 29:17 is categorically wrong. The 40mpw guy is wasting time with long runs. He needs to focus on the other six days of the week before attempting them. He just wants to play the fool.

Breakthroughs tend to happen all at once. That doesn't mean a recent change caused it. It could take months or years of steady work then suddenly the breakthrough happens as a result.

The longer long run Probably just gave you the confidence to go for it and all the races leading up to it probably helped too.

At your mileage, 90 minutes is plenty for a long. Try to increase mileage on the other days. If you run 6 days a week adding 1 mile to the other 5 runs adds 5 mpw. If you do that once every 6 months that's 10 mpw more each year at a slow sustainable pace. In 6 years that's 100 mpw, although at some point you'd be adding doubles to keep up the 5 mpw increase every 6 months rule.

Correct. Even the stubborn 40mpw guy can try them, perhaps every 3-4 weeks, but not as a weekly "staple"

You climb the ladder one rung at a time. You don't get to jump to the 4th rung just because you want to.

Ok, I get it @malmo, but let’s be realistic. A ‘typical’ 40 mpw 5K runner has a job or school and is going to make hay on the weekends. Routine is everything and having a long run on the weekend is one way to preserve that. It might not be the ‘textbook’ way of getting things done, but it satisfies the all-important KISS principle.

An extra few miles added on to a couple of runs during the week does not take very long at all.

I can analyze anyone's schedule and find time for them to run. Most people talk more about running than actually doing it. People waste a lot of time.

Like I tell some of my athletes that start giving excuses why they can't properly train, "Science doesn't care."

Recovering several days from one run is not good training.

What Malmo is saying is that someone with a low weekly mileage plan is not strong enough to do the long run and recover fast enough for the next session which undermines the entire long term training plan. So why do that as a plan?