What is the longest run you should do when training for a marathon

"2 hours or 20 miles, whichever comes first." - Frank Shorter

After due consideration, I literally could've even. It was the pumpkin spice latter of mileage totals.

Having never ran the marathon and with no desire to ever run one this has been a useful thread for me. The reason for that is people will sometimes ask me what they should do to run a marathon. Although the marathon tends to be about 95% aerobic there is a purpose for those 400 meter runs. It prevents injuries to train at various speeds. Multiple speed training will also make you a better runner.

If your goal is just to finish this is still a good idea.

However I would like to hear more about the buildup to these 22 milers.

Peter Snell is said to have basically started with a 22 mile run. Few would attempt that today!

I think more recovery is needed than what most people suggest on here. Like the guy who said he ran 15-9-9-9-9-9-15. What are the paces for those runs? When was the recovery day?

I would like to hear more about that, and that is what the beginner and advanced runner needs the most!

The more mileage you do, the shorter longest run you need.

But if you can't recover from 26.2 miles at an easy pace within a week I'd say you lack something in your marathon preparation. That does not mean you need to actually run a marathon in training though.

Think of it this way. An average ultra runner can run an easy marathon per day for several days. A complete marathoner should also have that ability, just like he needs to be able to run a decent 10k. It's just about leg strength/durability. And you harden your legs either with high mileage or by progressively running longer long runs.

Maybe 30kms at your intended pace a month out. See how you go and adjust your actual race pace accordingly.

TrackCoach wrote:

I think a lot depends on what type of athlete you are and what type of mileage you have built up to. Someone who runs over a 100mpw, trains exclusively for the marathon all year and have been at it for a couple of years.

Thank you. I've only trained for and run one marathon, and in that marathon suffered an injury and had to hobble in the last few miles. But it was frustrating me that up until your post, no one had given any training context to what is appropriate for a long run.

I'd like to think that even though I've only trained for one marathon, I trained pretty hard, running over 100 miles per week for 8 weeks. For me, 22 miles on Sunday was pretty easy. If I was running 75 or 80 mpw, I don't think that would have been easy and doing it would have probably caused more of a disruption on the rest of my training. In that case, maybe I do one or two runs over 20 and not aim for something so high every week, or else I might lose out on potential benefits on Monday and maybe even Tuesday. My longest run was a 25 mile run and that was basically a miscalculation. The week that I went that far, I was beat up for an extra day or two after I did it. I had to compromise a workout to get back to equilibrium and return to normal training. Although the long run is definitely the glamour workout of marathon training, it still has to fit into the overall plan. Otherwise you are doing a particular long run just to say that you did it. This gets back to the OP's original assertion that the ideal long run will be dependent on the individual and his or her training plan.

Jruns wrote:

What is the longest run you should do when training for a marathon

The full distance, so 5 km.

How racist are you. Scots Highlander.

I did 20 steady, 20 fast finish, 14 fast finish, 21 easy, and will do 20 easy now on 9/21 Saturday, 4 weeks out. Should I do another 20-21 next week (9/28), then taper?

Or can I start tapering to 18 miles 9/28, 15 miles 10/5, and 11 miles around 10/10 (about 10 days before the 'thon on 10/20)?

I did my 21-miler and was a little bit tired at the end (soreness in legs) but felt aerobically I had more in me. 2:50:40 or about 8:08 pace. I would worry if I got to the point I had blurry vision!

I've "raced" a marathon at about 10 min off goal marathon time during the buildup and that worked pretty well. But the regular long runs were 22 miles. Not much reason to go beyond that more than once or twice as it does start to have an inverse effect being out there that long regularly. I would never recommend more than 26 or 27.

Interesting...

Have averaged 51-53 this training cycle, long of 21. Peaked at 61 last week. Hoping for 3:20 or better for my first one.

Highly dependent on the runner. I know runners that would be wiped out for a week after doing a 20-miler. And others that were ready to go hard or long again after a couple days. Usually the distance hogs would struggle to recover from intense workouts, and vice-versa.

jecht wrote:

Interesting...

Have averaged 51-53 this training cycle, long of 21. Peaked at 61 last week. Hoping for 3:20 or better for my first one.

More mileage during your week would probably help more than longer long runs.

UsedToBeKnowItAll wrote:

Highly dependent on the runner. I know runners that would be wiped out for a week after doing a 20-miler. And others that were ready to go hard or long again after a couple days. Usually the distance hogs would struggle to recover from intense workouts, and vice-versa.

I agree that it depends -- mostly on the runner, and at least partially on how the whole training plan is constructed.

After more than a dozen marathons in > 10 yrs (usually with too little training overall -- 35-45 mpw avg, with peak of 50 mpw most training cycles, with around 3/4 of those as BQ races), and nearly all with 3 runs of at least 20 (sometimes 3 20s, maybe 20, 21, 22), I set a PR at 60-62 mpw avg (last 16 wks), with a peak of 72, and 5 runs of at least 20 mi, with the longest at a little over 24. The PR was as a masters runner, but the PR should be taken with a grain of salt -- I'd done no half-decent long distance training before age 38.

I felt less sore in the days following my 24-miler than I have after 20-milers in other cycles. I'd guess that's mostly a product of overall mileage and at least partially a product of the average distance of long runs in the last 10 weeks of the cycle. But that's also part of my personal makeup: I have a hard time recovering from hill workouts and max VO2 workouts, with less difficulty recovering from long runs or mid-week goal pace runs > 12 miles. One more caveat: I now run a 24-mile training run in a just a couple of minutes more than I'd run a 22-miler in some other training cycles.

I did Hansons for my last marathon cycle but bumped a couple of the long runs up to 19.1 so that I ran for 2 and a half hours. That seemed more than enough for me given that I was consistently doing speedwork and tempos per the plan. Anything beyond that hasn't made much of a difference in the past. Plus it's not that hard to recover from 19 miles.

26.2 miles or more.

Would you train for a mile by running no longer than 8 tenths of a mile in training?

30 miles

You should do a 26.2 mile run during your training, so you know when you get tired and sow down to catch your breath, then continue running.