Let me give a little background info since this is a cross post (I think that is the right term) from another forum but thought I'd share it over here since this thread was mentioned in the original thread I responded to. I've been running for almost 2 years now and have come to the PERSONAL conclusion that the traditional emphasis placed on the long run is overly emphasized. I think the long run in circumstances has a desirable training effect that you can only get from a long run, but not in the traditional way "we" think of a long training run.
I think if you already have a big weekly consistent base that the long run serves more as practice exercise for pace control more than any of the other factors that may or may not contribute to the end result. In that sense I think the "practice" is extremely valuable, on the flip side I'm still undecided as to whether or not there are any physical benefits to some one who already has a large base. With that said I'm not trying to argue the training that works for me is the training that will work for everybody; rather offer up some evidence for the alternatives.
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I haven't had a chance to read the thread over on letsrun.com but I do find this topic interesting. When I first started logging decent weekly miles and was doing 1 or 2 a days, I'd often do either a longer run or a medium run and a shorter run. Usually during the normal training week I'd do > 10 mi 10 mi 21k on any single run of the day that the rest of the shorter runs that emphasized quicker paces `` 10k would suffer during the day (that largely could be due to the fact that I wasn't in as good as shape as I am now or that I ran the first 21k to fast or some combination of both). So then I started experimenting with doing a series of different shorter length runs throughout the day to see how the different lengths would affect my overall well being as well as the training effect.
What I've come to find is that personally for me a series of shorter runs (<= 10k) throughout the day provides better gains training wise and I'm able to maintain a triple digit base consistently vs. doing singles or one medium to long run + a short run where it is more difficult to maintain a triple digit base.
Over time I've put less and less emphasis on %% 21k runs and more and more emphasis on shorter 3+ runs a day. So for me a 10k, 5k, 5k, 10k, (7-8k), I've found to work better then say 21k + 5k. Obviously if I'm doing 30k vs. 26k the volume is more so you'd expect better returns, but even during the times I've messed around with 21k, 5k, 5k, or 21k, 10k, I've still overwhelmingly felt that a series of shorter runs gave me more training gains (10k, 5k, 5k, 10k) then either 21,5,5 or 21,10 though the latter is 1k more.
I think the shorter runs emphasize good training quality (and by quality I don't necessarily mean high intensity) + quick recovery stimulus in the body. In the shorter runs I'm able to isolate my target paces for the runs as well as mix in recovery runs in the same day. So instead of hard day easy day hard day easy day, I compress the hard day easy day cycle into a single fully recoverable day:
Modified Van Aaken schedule:
10k at a focused but easy pace
5k at a focused pace but w/ closing 250m to 500m accelerations @ 180+ bpm
5k ""
(Number of closing accelerations by feel)
10k <= 160 bpm
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7-8k easy (optional) <-- this run was optional last year and at most I was doing it every other day, this year my goal is to include it daily.
The 2 5k's are predominately easy to medium paced but I will venture into fast paces for the accelerations mixed with easy pace recoveries, still even though I'm hitting fast paces daily for short periods of time that kind of work still only composes less then 10% of total training volume per week and no more then 15% - 20%.
Initially after I started this schedule by the end of the day I was dead, even though at times my weekly averages were the same as my 1 and 2 a days in which I was far from dead. BUT every morning I was able to wake up and repeat the schedule. So obviously daily there was some increased stimulus that wasn't there in the 1 and 2 a days. But the increased stimulus was not from increased paces or harder efforts it was from the decreased recovery times between runs. At first I thought well maybe I'm putting myself in a cycle where I'm gradually wearing myself down daily and over time I would end up digging a hole for myself, but at the same time with each successive week I only found myself getting stronger and faster, so that didn't make sense.
So I came to the conclusion that even though my recovery times were shorter from run to run, overall I wasn't putting myself into recovery debt, overall I was providing just enough daily stimulus to achieve maximal training effects all day long and still able to fully recover after an 7-8h nap in the sack.
So I think my performance gains have come quickly for me because each day I'm providing my body with continued stimulus all day long verses the singular stimulus you get with 1 or 2 a days and a longer recovery period.
When I think about it, it makes reasonable sense, in a typical book/online schedule you have 1 run a day sometimes 2 (though 2 a days is pretty rare unless it's an elite schedule from what I've seen) and you alternate hard and easy days, hard and easy weeks, when done in the traditional way basically what your doing by doing longer runs is putting yourself overall into recovery debt in which you have to take an entire easy day or easy week (in the case of alternating hard and easy weeks) to recover. So on some days you might be over stimulating your body (in which case you'd need more recovery) and on some days you might be under stimulating your body (in which case your not making the most of training time). I think these large macro training cycles makes the art of peaking overly complicated. Whereas if daily you provide your body with a constant all day stimulus again not putting yourself into a recovery debt, peaking becomes more of a trivial matter because you're almost never in the recovery hole.
At first I thought I should throw in a long run of 21k to 30k to tie everything together weekly after all everything I'd read had led me to believe that the all important weekly long run was "un disposable", my experience has taught me differently.
After messing around with my schedule to include weekly long runs what I found was that because I was already running "all day long", despite the time between runs, once I got accustomed to and broken in by my multi run days, tying together my shorter runs into a continuous long run required no adjustment, it felt just as comfortable as a regular daily run except longer.
Despite that, I haven't concluded conclusively whether the long run is useful (from the perspective of overall gains) or not useful in a daily multi run schedule. However, one thing stands out very concretely: a long runs value for me comes not from the physical or mental gains of the run itself but from the pace control. So in a sense I look at the long run as a pace control tool that helps me gauge what paces I can or can't maintain throughout say a marathon or ultra; for that it still remains a valuable tool; aside from that I'm undecided.
As it stands now towards the end of last years training I was doing long runs bi-weekly. In the future once I'm maintaining 38-40k daily I'll probably limit the long run to once a month, unless someone on here overwhelming convinces me that I'm retarded.
E**2