Long run everyday?

Yeah, I did that in college running on my own. Not racing or on a team, so I just got into the habit of doing the same distance every day. 10 miles was kind of a minimum run, so I worked up from 11 day pretty quickly to 16 a day, and maxed out at 20 a day for several months. Benefits: got to eat a lot, love exploring, and that let me explore a lot of roads and trails far from my dorm/apartment (didn't have a car in college, cycling allowed me to explore all the more distant canyon roads in LA area). Also made me a better runner when I dropped that back down a bit and added some tempo runs.

Kyrunner288 wrote:

Just curious, has anyone ever experimented with just doing a long run (15-22 miles) at an easy to moderate pace everyday? Would there be any benefits to this or a bad idea. I know a lot of elite guys did this back in the day.

A guy named Ed Whitlock used to do this. He'd run 2-3 hours every day, with no speed workouts, stretching or anything else, except the occasional weekend 5K, 10K or half marathon race. He set multiple age group world records over a decade, many of which still stand. At least one of them is age graded at 101%, I think.

Ed ran sub 4 hour at 85

Good ultra training. For marathon and below, probably better to split it up every other day. Also if you do this, try to do it on soft trails for some of the runs.

I knew of a guy whose training plan was 14 miles Tuesday-Sunday, and rest on Monday.

There are better ways to train, but it's hard to suck on 85mpw no matter how you break it up.

earlybird wrote:

Ed ran sub 4 hour at 85

Pretty amazing when you think about it. Other famous Canadians can't even do a 3:07 Marathon.

I did a 30 days running streak, long time ago.

After that I felt like a 5k race isn't enough to warm up.

After that I ran a couple of week on trail, wearing heavy military boots, because of the mud, leaves and snow.

That winter I gained a lot. I don't know how much for sure, because I broke an arm after that.

At that point I don't think it's called a "long run" anymore. Just a run.

zzzz wrote:

Yeah, I did that in college running on my own. Not racing or on a team, so I just got into the habit of doing the same distance every day. 10 miles was kind of a minimum run, so I worked up from 11 day pretty quickly to 16 a day, and maxed out at 20 a day for several months. Benefits: got to eat a lot, love exploring, and that let me explore a lot of roads and trails far from my dorm/apartment (didn't have a car in college, cycling allowed me to explore all the more distant canyon roads in LA area). Also made me a better runner when I dropped that back down a bit and added some tempo runs.

Holy sh1t, you are Forrest Gump.

Feel like what you're saying, OP, is similar enough to a Lydiard base phase where you're running 1-2+ hours every day. Long run is relative. If you're logging 100-120+ mpw then you're going for a lot of double digit runs. You'll also have some doubles mixed in. Every runner is different. Wouldn't recommend something like this for a prolonged period of time but only easy/moderate running in 8-14 mile increments for your main run of the day is pretty normal. Get a base then add in the specific work that aligns with your goals. Not everyone can handle that sort of thing so you need to decide for yourself what you can handle.

I think you'd be pretty fit provided that you sprinkle in a threshold run or race every week or every other week.

Seth DeMoor

If you do a long run every day it’s no longer a long run

When you said that guys back in the day did it you pretty much answered your own question. More recently you had Josh McDougal doing it.

Brown is down wrote:

Seth DeMoor

Yeah, seth has been doing 140 mile weeks at about 20 miles a day for the last couple weeks.

In college i would do a progressive week of 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, 2 hours. Work that in with soccer and cycling and i was in pretty good shape.

Go read up on the "marathon training" phase of Lydiard training. It is essentially 60-120 minutes of "steady" running every morning and 30 minutes every afternoon. "Steady" was considered a pace that would leave you pleasantly tired.

It can work well as part of a program, some would argue for up to maybe 3-4 months of a year for very special cases, but it would not help you reach your maximum potential.

I always thought a long run had to be relatively longer than your other training days for it to qualify as a “long run”. Otherwise, is it really a long run? Doing a “long run” every day would mean progressively increasing from your base long run so say you did 15 miles as your LR the week prior, you’d need to do 17 the next day then 19 then 21 then 23 then 25 etc in a row to really be doing “long runs” every day.

I do not recommend this because eventually you will have to run 50+ miles per day to achieve a long run and that is unhealthy

imbeingpedantic wrote:

I always thought a long run had to be relatively longer than your other training days for it to qualify as a “long run”. Otherwise, is it really a long run? Doing a “long run” every day would mean progressively increasing from your base long run so say you did 15 miles as your LR the week prior, you’d need to do 17 the next day then 19 then 21 then 23 then 25 etc in a row to really be doing “long runs” every day.

I do not recommend this because eventually you will have to run 50+ miles per day to achieve a long run and that is unhealthy

It depends on your reference points. If I do a 15 mile run everyday you can argue that I don't do a long run because no run is longer than any other run if the reference point is just my running. But if you do 5 mile runs all the time you could argue that all my runs are long if the reference point is what you do. Most of us think of runs on the high side of a half marathon as long so if you do such a run every day you'll be seen as doing a long run every day.

imbeingpedantic wrote:

I always thought a long run had to be relatively longer than your other training days for it to qualify as a “long run”. Otherwise, is it really a long run? Doing a “long run” every day would mean progressively increasing from your base long run so say you did 15 miles as your LR the week prior, you’d need to do 17 the next day then 19 then 21 then 23 then 25 etc in a row to really be doing “long runs” every day.

I do not recommend this because eventually you will have to run 50+ miles per day to achieve a long run and that is unhealthy

My erratic early years in college had my Sunday long run at 80 minutes on a good day, for maybe 9 miles? I never ran 9 miles any other time of the week, but was at maybe 12-15 daily. Never made sense to me then, nor now.