Long run, 25% of your weekly mileage?

dotato wrote:

he and Scott have folks doing 24 miles in a 80+ mile week. Same with Beck's plan. He calls for 26 milers in what amounts to a 70 mile week.

That is very tiring to do, which is why they can't run more than 70-80 miles in a week.

One of my weeks was 132 miles, with a long run of 18, which was only on the seventh day because of being tired from running 25/26 miles on three of the other days, with two a day training and volume repetitions. Besides that I think my longest "run" that week was 10 miles. The 18 miles was an easy day.

People like Burfoot always ran low mileage, because he'd go out and run 30 miles at one time, so of course he was too tired to do anything else the rest of the week.

Steve Jones had never run 20 miles in his life prior to running 2:08 and breaking the WR.

Grete Waitz' longest run before breaking the WR was 12 miles.

Rosa Mota's longest training runs stopped at 90 minutes.

Jim Peters who broke the marathon WR five times said to "train little, hard and often." His longest runs were usually 16 miles.

at 80-90mpw, my long runs are 15-16

you could do a 20miler every once in awhile, but best to just concentrate on getting your mileage up over time.

if you're so anxious to do 25% long run, then you're probably not running enough weekly mileage.

25% is some rough figure Jack Daniels book has.

Malmo has said he's done many 20milers back to back i think (correct me if im wrong) and that the long run is overrated. A run that is "long" is all relative.

Kenny Moore Sample Schedule:

Sun: 28 miles in 3hrs

Mon: easy 4 mile jog at 7:00 pace

Tue: easy 4 mile jog

Wed: 8x1320 in 3:30, 5 mile jog, 4x110 sprints

Thu: easy 4 mile jog

Fri: easy 5 mile jog

Sat: 16x330 in 45-46sec, 110 jog recovery; 8 miles at 6:00 pace; 6x110 sprints

Sun: easy 4 mile jog

Mon: easy 4 mile jog

Tue: 35 miles in 3:50

I'm up to 40mpw right now and about to go for a 15 mile long run. I just like running long distances, they appeal to me. Most of my runs are in the range of 8-10 miles.

The 25% rule is bogus. There just needs to be some rhyme and reason to the training. I coached 2 teachers in their late 30s. They didnt have time to run more then 40 miles a week. We learned the first season that2 workouts and a long run workout/easy with 1day off, broke them but still qualified for boston. Then next season we pretty much went to 1 hard and one moderate with a long workout and alternated with a 2 hard and a long easy run and 2days off and they stayed injury free this time and posted PRs by 5 and 8mins. Their weekly long runs ranged anywhere from 14-18 with 2 22milers in a 16 week plan. Also they had 10k PRs as well during this same training cycle.

As long as you take your easy days easy and build around the long run depending if its a workout or easy run, youll be fine to doing 30-50% of your weekly milage on the single long run.

as a 100mpw average runner I usually do 16-18 miles every sunday as a long run-this seems aout the right volume.

What about for a college runner training for 8k-10k running 140 miles a week? I'm know I'm not going to do a 28 mile run. My longest run this week was a 21 miler. Thats only 15% of my weekly mileage. Theres a difference in marathon training and 5k-10k training. Some people in this thread need to realize that.

30 mpw --> long run 8

40 mpw --> long run 10

50 mpw --> long run 12

60 mpw --> long run 14

70 mpw --> long run 15-16

80 mpw --> long run 16

90 mpw --> long run 16+ (depending on what you're training for)

Sounds about right to me.

Understanding of course that us hobby joggers don't run enough miles to train properly for a marathon, if we're peaking at 50 miles does that mean our longest run of marathon prep should be 12-13 miles? This is the quandry we face. I don't have the time nor the health to run 80 miles, but I like marathons, how would race day go if I never went over 12 miles? I'm serious about this question.

Take this anecdote for whatever you want -

I'm a middle distance runner. I was injured most of last year and the beginning of this year and only started running back at my previous mileage levels this summer. So then this fall I got back into a regular routine, two workouts per week.

With this thread in mind, I decided not worry about long runs, since malmo is calling them the icing on the cake. Since October I've been running regular 50 mile weeks, so a 25% long run would be 12.5 miles. 20% would be 10 miles. I've probably only run more than 10 miles once or twice over the last 15 weeks. Usually I'll try to get in a hard 8-9 mile run, but honestly I don't think of it as a long run - it's not even taking me an hour!

Anyway, the point is that cutting out long runs (or at least the dogmatic idea of a weekly 75-90 minute run) has made zero difference in my race performance. Actually I'm having a great winter, indoor pr's at 800, mile, and 3k (and I think I'm in 5k pr shape too, but probably won't run one).

I will probably bump up my mileage and do some longer runs this summer, but once next fall hits and I'm back to doing several hard workouts each week again, no way will I try for a 20-25% long run.

This kid is in HS and running 40 miles a week. Yes, 25% in a long run makes total sense. Keep doing it. When you get to 80 miles a week, 25% in a long run probably doe not make sense but in HS, you'll probably never get to that total.

Keep doing your 10 miler weekly.

makessense wrote:

This kid is in HS and running 40 miles a week. Yes, 25% in a long run makes total sense. Keep doing it. When you get to 80 miles a week, 25% in a long run probably doe not make sense but in HS, you'll probably never get to that total.

Keep doing your 10 miler weekly.

Wrong. Completly wrong. A person running 40 miles a week would benfit from spreading the mileage throughout the week rather than lumping it all into one day.

I ran 140 miles this week and my longest run was 15 miles. Training for 5k-10k.

I don't believe in a long run unless you are running over 80 miles a week or are training for the marathon on low mileage.

You, sir, need to learn to respect the marathon.

Chic Harley... wrote:

Understanding of course that us hobby joggers don't run enough miles to train properly for a marathon, if we're peaking at 50 miles does that mean our longest run of marathon prep should be 12-13 miles? This is the quandry we face. I don't have the time nor the health to run 80 miles, but I like marathons, how would race day go if I never went over 12 miles? I'm serious about this question.

Are you doing 50 consistently throughout the year or is that sort of a high level for you as you're getting ready for a particular marathon? If you're doing 50 consistently with a long run of 12-13, I would suggest lengthening that run to about 2 hours or so as you're getting ready for the marathon.

I think 50 with only a 12-13 might be pushing things a bit, BUT, if you've been doing that for a long time it's making you fitter and you might manage ok. I had a friend who did 2:40 on nothing more than 40-45 a week and a FEW runs of 12 miles.

Malmo,

You gave your opinion on page one. I gave mine above. It's sad that you have to come back and tell me I am wrong, completely wrong.

I am sure there is more than one way - your way - to get faster.

I agree with what's written below in regards to marathoners. In terms of Pfitz and his books, they are probably more different at lower mileage levels, but become more similar to the way he training on the higher mileage plans, but I haven't spoken with him about it. RT mag had an article that said if you can't hit 70 MPW or more in training, your marathon will suffer, but many don't want training to take up that much time so they run on lower mileage but they enjoy the process more.

"If you've NEVER seen a marathon training plan without 2-3+ 20 milers, you're overlooking metric plans which top out at an equally round figure of 30 km, and also the Hanson's "marathoning for the masses" plan of a few years back:

http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=4447

(b) Running doubles for high weekly mileage, the long run becomes relatively less important. Sure, if you're training for a marathon you probably don't want to skip it or anything; but if you're training well at 120+ MPW you could skip or minimize your long run and still run a good one.

(c) But the majority of marathon participants, training at say 25 to 50 MPW, absolutely need the long-ass long runs just to finish the damn race. 35 MPW doesn't prepare you to run a marathon; the weekly 15-20 miler is what gets low mileage marathoners to the finish line. And that 15-20 is a third to a half the volume for this population.

So not only do low mileage marathoners need to run a much higher % of their weekly volume in the long run, arguably they need longer long runs, period. At least they have a stronger need to run a few 18-20+ versus higher mileage more serious runners. If these long runs are as malmo likes to say the icing on the cake for the serious runner... well, the 35-40 MPW crowd never makes much of a cake in the first place, they're racing on pure icing, so they'd better not skimp on the icing. To refine that analogy, the low mileage marathon builds just enough of a cake to stack the icing on: the paltry mileage"