Depends on the individual and the event.
Depends on the individual and the event.
Asa few have said, it's relative. When I'm doing 70mpw, 20 miles is a normal long run. For the guy I know who ran 25:00 in his first 5k and runs 20mpw with 10:00 miles as easy pace, 6 miles (10k in an hour) is a long run.
If you're doing singles only, I think a good rule of thumb is a long run is double your normal average day. (If you're doubling this could make for an overly long calculation by that method.)
So if you cover 5 miles most days, 10 miles is a good long run in a 40 mile week.
If you cover 8 miles on non-long data, a 16 mile long run in a 64 mile week is good.
Some would say the long run should be a smaller proportion of your week than this, but you get the idea. (Making the long run 1.75 times the other days' average will make it ~20% of the week rather than 25%)
Depends who you ask. Usain Bolt would certainly say that a 12-mile run is a long run. But, ask a ultra marathoner and they would disagree.
I'm too long wrote:
I'm not talking about the what someone's longest run of the week is (that could be 8 miles for some people), but a long run as a workout. My friend (via his coach) insists that a long run needs to be at least 90 minutes to get the benefits that a long run is suppose to accomplish. Previously I was told that a long run just needed to be 60 minutes.
I did try to google this - but does someone here know if something does happen after 90 minutes that doesn't happen after 60 minutes? Increased mitochondria, capillirization, increased efficiency, some kind of increased ability to utilise fats... whatever.
Oh, to be clear, this is not marathon training, just for running cross country, so not worried about hitting the wall or whatever marathon runners worry about with their long runs.
From my study of the available scientific literature, the benefit of a long run compared to a tempo or LT workout is unclear. My best guess is that long runs cause your body to adapt to better running efficiency by increasing your muscle tone, burning body fat, and learning how to run without burning much energy. But this is mostly speculation.
This week I'm doing 110 miles is singles. That's about one 16 mile run per day. I consider all of these to be long runs. The main difference is that on Tuesday and Saturday I go for sub 5:50 pace average, and the other days I just complete the distance in however long it takes.
I feel that long runs are crucial to running development- that's why I'm doing 7 per week😎
I think I read in Daniels (could be somewhere else) that around 90 min. is when you start to see the benefits of the long run, more mitochondria, more capilaries, etc..
That pretty much jives with my personal experiences as well. When I was "training" and not just doing a daily run when I started having those regular weekly runs of at least 90 min. I could see a change in fitness, but then that's just my experiment of one.
ChuggsBunny wrote:
Can you really call it running if it takes you 90mins to run 12 miles ?
What part about 12 miles being less than 90 minutes of running did you not understand?
Trool fail 101
bro my long run is a weekly 5k
A lot of the benefits that you would gain from a long run don't occur till after 60-70 minutes. Those saying that you don't receive the benefits of increased mitochondria and capilarization till after 90 minutes are in error. For 1500m runners, a 90-105 minute run is probably sufficient for your peak long run, and 70-90 minute long runs for much of the season are fine.
One of the main differences of running longer than 90 minutes is you run out of much of your glycogen stores—not that big a deal to train like that for distances less than the 5k for the majority of athletes.
One salient point to keep in mind: Duration is more important than distance. One poster asked if 12 miles could be considered a long run if it takes you 90 minutes to run it. The longer it takes you, the more it can be considered a long run, regardless of the distance. The body registers intensity and duration, not mileage. If your daily runs are typically 60 minutes or so, 90 minutes qualifies as a long run. Anything over two hours, IMO, yields diminishing returns, and dramatically increased chance of injury or overtraining syndrome.
is that the study about 2-hours being maximum productive? or is that another one?
I've limited all my run now to no more than 2-hours because of that study and the relatively new research that shows micro-tears in heart tissue are not like other parts of the body and do not heal properly
I feel a distinct difference between a 15 mile run and a 18 mile run, the 18 mile definitely starts to touch on an LT wall like before the last 5k or two in a marathon.
Once you learn that sensation of LT though, it's sneaky because you know you can just pretty darn hard or far until that magic bad mile.
12 miles is not a long-run if you are a distance runner, maybe for track people but otherwise middle-long.
Comprehension needed wrote:
ChuggsBunny wrote:Can you really call it running if it takes you 90mins to run 12 miles ?
What part about 12 miles being less than 90 minutes of running did you not understand?
Trool fail 101
12 miles in 90 minutes is 7:30 pace. That seems pretty reasonable even for a 3 hour marathoner (as in 3:00 not 3:59).
A long run is relative to your weekly mileage. A 12 mile run for someone running 100 mpw is not a long run.
As to pace being irrelevant and also time caps like two hours; How about these really long walks that some Japanese marathoners do?
Are they long runs from a physiological point of view? What if the walk is up the side of a mountain getting well into the same HR's as flat easy running?
I'm too long wrote:
I did try to google this - but does someone here know if something does happen after 90 minutes that doesn't happen after 60 minutes? .
You'll be about half an hour late for work.
I believe that's what they're trying to say - and that's the conclusion that subsequent researchers have arrived it. However, note that at the 31% of VO2max trial (Fig 3), the ST fibers weren't even fully depleted after 3 hours - but that's a lower effort than regular walking.Man, I really wish I had access to all the data that came out of the study. What's published is just the tip of the iceberg, imho.
I'm too long wrote:
I just read this through once - but can you confirm that what it's saying is basically as you exercise at a low intensity glycogen is first used up in slow twitch fibers which are the ones being activated - but as their glycogen is depleted you begin to recruit fast twitch fibers even though the intensity level remains at a low level. Eventually then if you exercise long enough at a low intensity you will end up recruiting all muscle fibers and depleting the glycogen from the entire muscle?
"Increased mitochondria, capillirization, increased efficiency, some kind of increased ability to utilise fats... whatever."Is that why a cross country runner does long runs? To burn more fat? What point would that serve when the intensity of XC to worry about fat burning.As well, is that why runners in the 70s did long runs? "Incread mitochondria?" Or was it because, running long made it seem easier when they did marathons?The reality is, there is not set definition of what a long run is. When I started running 5km seemed long.
I'm too long wrote:
I'm not talking about the what someone's longest run of the week is (that could be 8 miles for some people), but a long run as a workout. My friend (via his coach) insists that a long run needs to be at least 90 minutes to get the benefits that a long run is suppose to accomplish. Previously I was told that a long run just needed to be 60 minutes.
I did try to google this - but does someone here know if something does happen after 90 minutes that doesn't happen after 60 minutes? Increased mitochondria, capillirization, increased efficiency, some kind of increased ability to utilise fats... whatever.
Oh, to be clear, this is not marathon training, just for running cross country, so not worried about hitting the wall or whatever marathon runners worry about with their long runs.
Allmost wrote:
A lot of the benefits that you would gain from a long run don't occur till after 60-70 minutes. Those saying that you don't receive the benefits of increased mitochondria and capilarization till after 90 minutes are in error. For 1500m runners, a 90-105 minute run is probably sufficient for your peak long run, and 70-90 minute long runs for much of the season are fine.
One of the main differences of running longer than 90 minutes is you run out of much of your glycogen stores—not that big a deal to train like that for distances less than the 5k for the majority of athletes.
Reasonable​ points but don't think El G ever ran for as long as 90 mins.
any run above 8 miles can be long run if you are ..
1. a sprinter - 800m runner
2. out of shape
it's all relative to the specific event your training for
I believe I read on an old letsrun thread that later research showed that while FT fibers are depleted of glycogen once ST twitch fibers become depleted, the FT fibers are not recruited per se.