Do long runs not matter for middle distance runners?

"The weekly long run" is the least important thing for middle distance.

in my case, I even consider the long run as the base to biuld up speed; even within a cycle of a week

at the beginning a 30km in the middle a halfm. (but slow pace, e.g 90min) and I ran a 4:07mile

yeah ive been wondering the same thing. sometimes i think the forums here confuse us md guys because we read the threads and automatically think its about us. i mean what benefit would a 12 mile run really have? when i do mine, i stop sometimes just to break up the monotony (like 1 min max). i feel the effects from a 12 miler a few days after, and i think its negative. seems to decrease testosterone and speed. locks the legs into that static feel. any input?

Who invented the weekly (Sunday!) long run? (This might be a good thread in itself.)

nope, it would not be a goods threat

a good threat would be to ask canova how to taper before a 3:29 perfomance (he mentioned that he desgns plans for top5 2010 guys...)

I'm kind of wondering this myself. Like instead of doing a 13 mile run every week, how about knocking it back to a 9-10 mile run and just adding a mile to a few other runs during the week.

I'm currently doing about 50-55 miles a week, the most I've ever done in my life, and really the first time I've ever actually built a proper base. Furthermore, I only ran one year of track in high school because I played baseball too, so this will be the first time I've actually been able to focus on training solely for middle distance. Unfortunately I probably won't be on a college track team until I transfer for next year, but I hope to run some open meets late winter/early spring.

Which leads me to another question about long runs. Let's say a long run a week really does benefit a middle distance runner more than spreading the weekly mileage out. If so, then how many weeks out from a target peak race is it ok to cut the long run back? 12 weeks? 8 weeks? 4 weeks!?

The weekly long run will help you on short distances too. It's all about your body learning to consume body fat stores in a more efficient way... faster and faster. Example: I had just finished my 2nd marathon and my friend asked me to run a 10k with him. I had never run a 10k before. I ran between 5 minutes and 5:15 the whole race because it seemed like such a short distance and not at all painful compared to some of the 30 mile runs we had made. I remember thinking that if I ever wanted to race 5k's and 10k's that I'd probably just stick to my marathon training and throw in some extra speed work.

As, Walker, Flynn, Scott, Dixon, Ovett ect.....if a long run matters..

First of all, if you want to run 800/1500 fast, be very careful about getting training advice from old marathoners (opposite ends of the spectrum).

What Renato has described is concentrating on aerobic power. This means intervals like 6X1000 or 12-8-6-4 breakdowns plus a long run of 60 minutes once a week. Everything else is recovery. Then, close to a peak you run 100/200 fast once or twice a week. This is almost exactly how Krummenacker won his world indoor gold. Krumm was also the only 1:43/3:31 guy the USA produced until Webb in 2007.

The long run for mid distance people has some use for anaerobic threshold development, as long as you don't push it much over 60 minutes. Steve Scott went out to 15 miles or just under 90 minutes for him.

These days, many of us are learning from Lagat and emphasizing longer hard tempo runs. Lagat's way is basically everything hard but not high mileage, starting with 13-14 miles close to 5:15 pace (he recently did 14 miles in 75 minutes), many HARD runs in the 4-8 mile range, and some intervals like 8X300 closer to racing periods.

I don't see much reason for slow runs much over 10 miles.

70's wrote:

As, Walker, Flynn, Scott, Dixon, Ovett ect.....if a long run matters..

Well, this article on Ovett suggests he didn't run longer than 10 miles, which for him is 55-65 minutes. See page 31.

internet researcher wrote:

70's wrote:

As, Walker, Flynn, Scott, Dixon, Ovett ect.....if a long run matters..

Well, this article on Ovett suggests he didn't run longer than 10 miles, which for him is 55-65 minutes. See page 31.

http://www.britishmilersclub.com/bmcnews/1999spring.pdf

Sebastian Coe also didn't do very long runs. Just like so many aspects of training, what works for some, doesn't work for others. I am sure there are many middle distance studs that did long runs and many that didn't. It is good to know the physiological reasons for doing something, but you still need to experiment and figure out what works for you.

Also, Steve Prefontaine's longest runs were 12 miles. This was from someone who had success all the way up to the 10k. I personally believe in long runs, but understand that they don't work for everyone.

In the monster Renato Canova, Glen Grant pointed out that Seb ran portions of his 8 mile runs at 4:30 pace. You have a similar situation with El Guerrouj running 10 miles in 50 minutes, but doing it several times a week. He may have done some runs (debatable) as long as 15 when getting ready to run 5000.

Keep in mind that 800 and 1500 are raced at 120% and 110% of VO2max pace. Fat metabolism has nothing to do with this, and even AT training doesn't have that much to do with lactate production relative to race pace for 1500.

70's wrote:

As, Walker, Flynn, Scott, Dixon, Ovett ect.....if a long run matters..

El Guerrouj, Bernard Lagat, Salah Hissou, Daniel Komen, Nouredinne Morcelli and many more....if a long run does not matter.

Top class runners that do long runs and top class runners that don't

The fact that your Walker, Flynn, Scott, Dixon, Ovett they all speak english as mother language isn't the condition they are top class runners.

The fact that some runners do long runs isn't the training part that matters.

Some runners replace the long run with EPO

i was a 800/mile/3k guy in college ... For me the 12-14 miles on Sunday helped me a lot ... i got stronger and faster ... sunday run is to be run relaxed and have fun with it .... when i went to college I never ran on sndays for the first two years; my last two years i started to run sundays and I got stronger and faster ... i went from a 4:15 miler to a 4:04 miler ... i believe that a lot had to do cause of the sunday run ... thats just my 2 cents ... it varies from runner to runner .

who specifically?

Skuj wrote:

Who invented the weekly (Sunday!) long run? (This might be a good thread in itself.)

Sunday run. Chistianism sign. We shall rest in Sunday.

Skuj wrote:

"The weekly long run" is the least important thing for middle distance.

Or any runner.

I find the long run (relatively speaking) to be most valuable early in the training calendar when mileage base is being established. For me and my athletes (mostly MD), a 90-100 min run seems to accelerate the adjustment to higher weekly mileage. I think that a lot of this depends on sleep, work schedule, etc.. Later in the periodization, long runs are unnecessary for fitness, but may help if done gently in aiding recovery (no more than 70 minutes, usually).

Running doubles is probably more important, in order to accelerate the recovery process throughout the week.