Breaks during long run?

That's a lot of time to drink some water!

I think that as long as you don't use it as an excuse to just take a break (specially if you're a marathoner) or don't let you heart rate fall too much, I think it's fine.

The two main goals of the long run (besides the aerobic development) is to get used to run with depleted glycogen stores and to exhaust the slow twitch fibers in order to force the recruitment of fast twitch muscle fibers and I don't think that a quick pause will affect any of these things.

Before some guys come roast me about the fast twitch stuff, Daniels says it if not in one of the editions of his Running Formula in one of his lectures on YouTube.

I wouldn't add a break into every run. But if you need water on a run, definitely stop for the time is takes to drink some water. Getting dehydrated running 90 minutes in 90 minute heat is worse than taking a minute to stop and drink water.

I thought it was a really long break as well but some of the guys in the group are all american so i suppose they have a good idea what theyre doing

Those guys definitely run faster than me!

But I take a pee break faster than they drink water.

Lydiard reckoned that the East Germans had shown that stopping for even 30-secs could halt the development of mitochondriia, capillaries or whatever but I'm doubtful. Maybe it's one of those 1% things for elites but not the average person.

The only thing I'd say is to make sure when you restart that you don't go tearing back off into your run. Anaerobic systems have had an opportunity to recharge and long run is trying to develop the aerobic side. Charging off fast again is a mistake I see with a lot of runners who stop to cross a road, poop or wait for slower members of their group.

I take short breaks during my long runs if it's very hot.

I timed my stops and they take anything from 8 to 15 seconds and on a very hot day, during a 20 mile run, I stop every 20-25 minutes. That beats carrying your own water.

If it is just a straight long run, a time-on-feet kind of thing, I'll take a quick water break or two if I need one. Maybe a pee break at the beginning. Most of my long runs are like this (I'm not a marathoner). If I am doing a specific long run workout, like a progression or long tempo, I try to avoid the breaks as much as possible since the run is a focused effort and should be "taken seriously'.

Reasons I will stop:

-bathroom

-traffic

-heat exhaustion/dehydration

-seeing someone I know (maybe)

I almost always stop on any run longer than 10 miles during summer months. That’s a refill of water bottle. Could be 2 min. Could be 10. When it’s really hot like it is now, I have no shame in stopping to cool down and hydrate. It just all depends.

In my last training cycle leading up to Boston I got really tired of water belts or vests so I set my up my runs so that I could use a water fountain and not have to carry water. So every 5 miles or so I would stop just long enough to get a drink.

Obviously there are other factors involved but I lowered my marathon PR by 8 minutes . So I don't think the quick stops hurt me. :)

When I first started running a couple of years ago, a mate showed me an article in Runners World (UK) that went along the lines of: if you take some walking breaks during long runs, you'll end up with a faster time than if you'd kept running.**

When I'm out for a short run, I don't stop, but when I'm out for a long run, I generally have a walking break every five km or so.

Usually I only stop if I'm crossing a busy intersection and/or at railroads when a I'm unlucky enough to have a train cross my path. However, more times than I'll care to admit I've had to stop to go to take a dump in the woods. This though, is usually the result of poor planning on my end.