'Faster' long runs - any benefit?

There are a bunch of different workouts being mentioned here

A) HS coach doing 70 mins where you get up towards MP for the last 1/3rd

B) wetmore doing 20 miles at the upper end of easy run pace (6 mins instead of 630 for sub 14 5k guys)

C) kipchoge doing doing things like 30k at close to MP pace given the altitude

A+B are sort of medium hard days. You will be ready for a workout in 48 hours. C is brutal and might take 3 days to recover.

not sure if the OP is still checking this, but the short answer is "yes" (the physiological benefits and adaptations are beneficial for any aerobic event) as some have already pointed out, and the long answer is "but it depends."

i'd say your parameter of 90 minutes-plus is a big part of the "depends" component: maybe for a donovan brazier (to be clear, i don't know anything about his training) type runner you'd say no, but johnny gray regularly ran hour-plus tempos at what i'd guess to be 5:20-ish pace. igloi training (which is what johnny did as well as myself) used long tempos as a regular weekly component for months before a track season (october-april). however, we 800-5k runners only did one long run a week, with no other runs over 7 miles (though cumulative track work could easily be more than 7 on some days). on the other hand, peter snell (lydiard trainer) ran regular hilly 22 milers weekly at 6 minute pace or faster during his buildup phase.

the other "depends" component is how does it fit in your overall training plan? for my part as a masters runner, the longer tempos (maybe 3 per month--60-90 minutes--i like progressive runs for their psychological benefit, but i don't know if there's a physiological benefit versus even/steady paced runs) have been essential for my training and success (a difficult term to quantify, but i feel i've had some), and i rarely step out over 10k...

that's my story and i'm sticking to it,

cush

Bison runner wrote:

This way, you effectively get three “harder” workouts per week and great aerobic stimulus without totally overtaxing the body.

This is the basis for all training for an endurance athlete. You train as consistently as you are able to at a high aerobic level while allowing your body to adapt to the stimulus. It's finding that balance that allows for this.

It's a little different for everyone, but not as much as some would think.

Then there are very important variables. If you are not getting your sleep or eating well than you will not adapt as completely. This is incredibly important as you make 100% of your gains at rest.

When I advocate for faster regular runs I always get the Wejo article thrown at me. But, I am interpreting what he wrote differently. His main point was to not hammer the bulk of interval sessions and I agree. Another point was to not hammer all of your other runs and I agree. He does say that at times he would run 7 pace or slower based on how his body felt. Again, I agree with this, but, I didn't interpret that as the key to his success. Not to mention he was around 120 MPW when he ran his 28 minute 10,000. 120 MPW is going to allow for some easy runs.

Lydiard's name is thrown around a lot on these boards. He believed that the maximum MPW anyone can really handle at his steady state pace was 100.

Someone in college who is probably not getting proper nutrition, rest, and is hammering away at all of his training I agree will not do as well as he could.

If I am sending an athlete on a long run I almost always have them progress to faster pace later in the run. I do this under the presumption that the type 1 fibers are primarily being worked early on in the run and before they are fully fatigued we are recruiting more of a percentage of type 2 fibers because of the increase in force applied. If they are not accumulating an acidic state because they are not racing they only have to recover from impact damage and muscle fatigue associated with running long. For a fit athlete they can return to a medium paced effort a couple of days later benefiting from the full adaptation they earned during that progression run.

For a Marathoner of 2:30 or slower one or twice per cycle I will send them out on a beat up type run where they run a slower pace for their long run equal to the time I would expect them to finish the race but other than that I almost never have my athletes run a slow long run.

I have just never seen good examples of the slow running with fast hard intervals as the basis for training ever bringing an athlete to their full potential. Every time I start training an athlete that was under this kind of plan I am guaranteed to bringing them to significant performance improvements.

As other posters have said, it depends.

What's your distance? I realize we're talking track here, but I think it's a mistake to lump 5k and 10k together. They are very different events.

What's your muscle fiber distribution? A fast twitch (relative to the event) runner cannot handle three hard efforts per week, and it's even more important to ensure that the long run isn't taking away from the track sessions. But even a fast twitch runner can benefit from strength side training. Typically a FT runner who does a faster long run will do a shorter total distance.

How experienced is the runner? A younger runner will likely have less emphasis on the hard long run, for two reasons. First, a more experienced runner rarely has much room for improvement on the speed side, whereas the younger runner can keep pushing that ceiling up a bit more. Second, the younger runner doesn't have the muscoloskeletal adaptations (which take a LONG time) to tolerate high volume intensity.

And the big one is periodization. Where in your training cycle are you putting these workouts? A 10k runner absolutely should not be hammering long runs 6 weeks out from a peak competition. But at 12 weeks out, those hard long runs can be great support for doing really hard specific work later. A really good (by which I mean experienced and well trained, not necessarily fast) 10k runner can do 9 x mile at 10k pace on 90 seconds recovery. If you don't have long, hard runs in your legs, you're not likely to hold the pace in the last three reps.

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, when a 10k runner falls off the pace in the second half of a race, it's usually not because they've used too much of their anaerobic reserves. If you're running a 10k at 95% of VO2max, you will fall off the pace before halfway. If you fall off the pace later than that, it's usually muscular endurance that's stopping you. Or, relatedly, you've exhausted your better trained muscle fibers and are now relying on your "bench," which hasn't been fully developed if you don't have enough high volume workouts. If we put such an athlete in a lab, we'd probably see that their oxygen consumption starts to decrease as pace stays steady (inferior capillarization, fewer/smaller mitochondria, fewer enzymes -- it all means that you can't pull as much oxygen out of the blood into working muscles), indicating that anaerobic metabolism is picking up more of the slack. This quickly makes the pace unsustainable.

Another way of looking at it is this: Assume the well trained athlete is going to run a 10k at 92-93% of VO2max. A lot of people mistakenly focus too much on getting the VO2max high, thinking that they can take for granted that the athlete will hold the appropriate 92%. But without adequate strength side work, which NORMALLY should include some fast long runs, you might only be able to muster 88-90%, at least as an average. In practice, you'll start at 92% and then fall off. For an experienced runner, most of the room for improvement is in pushing up the percentage of VO2max that you can hold for the race distance, not improving the VO2max itself. That means more strength-side work.

+1 on everything otter said

I'd say yes but allow them to come naturally.

I ran 2:35 first time out in the marathon and my long run maxed out at 20 miles, which early on tool around 2 hours 20mins to complete and gradually came down to 2:10.

Second time out I ran 2:27 and again my long runs maxed out at 20 miles but I was able to bring down 2:10 to 1:57. Not by aiming to run them faster but just by getting fitter and applying a bit more speed during the week, which helps make the long run pace feel easier and so naturally you end up running a bit faster.

Run how you feel, and let your body dictate. It will get faster naturally as you adapt to the stresses.

This is a great post. And the keys of balancing sleep, diet, etc to optimize training, the specific muscle types of individual runners, and the total volume they are doing (say 80 mpw vs 130 mpw) all need to be taken into consideration.

For me, the assumption is that most (especially younger) runners are likely going to run their hard days too hard. They will also run their easy days too hard. So, they won’t achieve homeostasis and maximum adaptation. But we are not talking about a specific pace. If runners can hold themselves back during interval sessions, then they can get away with more moderately paced “easy days.”

I still think it’s wise to give an athlete 48 hours to recover after a long, progressive run and to allow for optimized training the following week. One day off isn’t going to hurt anyone.

The specific long run with faster parts is only for the half marathon / marathon. I`m sure! :)

When Yobes Ondieki, the first man to go sub 27, was preparing to break the world record in the 10K, he completed interval workouts with the work intervals set at exact world-record pace. Over time, he shortened the recoveries between work intervals until recovery time deteriorated to a meager 10 seconds. He wouldn't have had recovered well enough to run a fast hard long run from intense workouts like that.

By running long hard runs you are training more like the Japanese who produce many great half and full marathoners but are no where to be seen in 10k or below.

The Wizard JS wrote:

The specific long run with faster parts is only for the half marathon / marathon. I`m sure! :)

Your half marathon and marathon runners get slower each year. I`m sure! :)

ytjyu wrote:

The Wizard JS wrote:

The specific long run with faster parts is only for the half marathon / marathon. I`m sure! :)

Your half marathon and marathon runners get slower each year. I`m sure! :)

And every other distance runner too if they’re not at least getting some tempo miles in their long run.

Run Fan wrote:

When Yobes Ondieki, the first man to go sub 27, was preparing to break the world record in the 10K, he completed interval workouts with the work intervals set at exact world-record pace. Over time, he shortened the recoveries between work intervals until recovery time deteriorated to a meager 10 seconds. He wouldn't have had recovered well enough to run a fast hard long run from intense workouts like that.

By running long hard runs you are training more like the Japanese who produce many great half and full marathoners but are no where to be seen in 10k or below.

It's called periodization. The question isn't whether long, hard runs are better than race-pace work. They're not. The question is whether they have a place. They do. Particularly, as I noted above, prior to the specific phase.

800 dude wrote:

+1 on everything otter said

I would say the same for your post +1

Very true. Another anecdotal piece, but in one training block I was hitting workouts and felt decent, but really felt like I made a huge jump in fitness when my daily runs and long run pace increased. In the case of 5k and under I would say that a "fast" long run should not be a hard workout, but a consistent effort. In these events 800 dude is right, the intervals and specific workouts are much more important than a fast long run.

10k and up requires more highly aerobic sessions, but an important thing to note is that the volume of a workout day can be close to the volume of a long run. A workout I've done in preparation for a half marathon. 3 miles, 2miles, 2miles,1 mile @LT. With a two mile warm up and cooldown, thats 13 miles. Obviously this workout is intense and isn't done on a weekly basis, but in cases like this there's no reason to do a fast long run.

Often you see in marathon training workouts put inside a long run. Not just 20 miles at a moderate pace, but something like alternating miles between easy pace and T pace. I think this type of training is very applicable to 10k and half marathon runners as well and is often overlooked.

You have to think of what the purpose for a faster long run is. That purpose is to provide aerobic support at the end of races, but in a race like a 10k we can get more specific endurance from a high volume of race pace reps. There are instances in which a long run is right, but is more like icing on the cake.

I do believe that what you're saying is true, but I actually think I have some experience with this as I just started running faster long runs 2 weeks ago in preparation for my high school track season. The key here that many people mess up is not giving high school kids enough aerobic work, such as hard long runs, or slower but longer tempos at marathon pace. Without these, you see a bunch of kids who can run fast at 1600/3200, but besides that they're toast and don't do anything in college. Take Chris Derrick for example. He was running 75 miles per week in high school, with a 9 mile tempo at around 5:25 pace each week. Thats what we should be having our high schoolers doing, not grinding 12x400 at mile pace in August. In the past 2 weeks that I started running long runs harder, which still isn't super fast, but in my 15 mile long runs I went from 6:35ish pace to 6:10 pace, my LT interval workouts improved like 5 seconds per mile in 2 FREAKING WEEKS. And this isn't like going from 5:30-5:25. I went from 5:05-5:00 in 2 weeks. I don't care what the crazy average lets run poster thinks, but steady, harder aerobic work like this that doesn't leave me super dead is the key. Without a harder long run and some form of tempo run every week, you will never reach full potential.

How do you guys feel on moderate long runs? 6:30-6:40 pace? I’m more of a miler.

Mark Wetmore

Lots of good posts from otter and 800 dude.

I'm pretty sure Canova has talked about this a lot. He specifies distances and paces for different events:

https://runningscience.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/The-Methods-of-Renato-Canova.pdf

In short, yes it will likely help you for a 10k. Excluding pure sprinters, Donavan Brazier is about as opposite as you can get from a 10k guy, so I'm not quite sure why he was used as an example in this specific thread. Canova talks about several 10k runners who moved up to the marathon and then ended up PR'ing in the 10k. He believed it was partly due to the higher quality long runs (I believe he used Molly Huddle has one example). You have to wonder, if you're running the same 16-18 mile run at 6:40-7:00 pace from your RS Freshman year to RS Senior year, what's the point? What stimulus are you providing after the 100th time you do it?

As others have said, you don't want to take away from your high quality race-pace sessions. That's why periodization is a thing. In your 'peaking phase' maybe you only do a hard, long run once a month for maintenance (and even that is somewhat controlled AND ONLY IF you've done harder long runs consistently in your previous block of training).

Lastly, 16-19 miles (with 13-15 miles at ~5:40 pace.. assuming a few miles easy to warm up) for a 30:00 10k guy really isn't that hard of an effort. The first time it is, sure. But you don't just go from running 7:00 pace all your life to 5:40 pace the next week lol. You get injured from doing things you've never done before; not from running 5:40 pace. Over the course of a year (or few years), you gradually work down to that pace. Once you have the aerobic strength, it's really not a hard effort- it's not easy- but it's just not that hard. Of course, until you actually do it, it may seem really hard, so you may not believe me, but... it's really not :)

Another anecdote - but a college runner that returned to running after a long break in my late 20s. Used to finish every college season exhausted and/or injured due to constant intervals. Now, my key workout of the week is a faster long run - and I have PR'd in the 5k and 10k with almost no other workouts besides just moderate hilly runs. By faster long run I am usually talking about 12-14 in the 6:15/mile range. It has done wonders for me. I am tired the next day but not too tired - can still get an hour easy and am fine 48 hours later.