the Long Run in 2025 – Suggestions

The long run should be part of almost every runner’s schedule. However, the optimal long-run varies considerably based on ability and target race distance.

Let’s quickly look at the science and the implications for your training.

Arthur Lydiard was one of the first coaches to realise the importance of long weekly runs. As far back as the 1960s, he incorporated them into his athletes’ regimes during the base phase to develop endurance. Then, they were used in the sharpening phase to maintain aerobic capacity.

Long Run Science

Peter Snell and others have since contributed to a body of research that shows long runs drive physiological adaptations like:

1. Aerobic development: Mitochondrial growth and capillarisation enhance oxygen delivery to muscles.
2. Fuel efficiency: They train the body to use fat as fuel, conserving glycogen for higher-intensity efforts.
3. Muscle adaptation: Repeated loading strengthens muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
4. Fast-twitch recruitment: As slow-twitch fibres fatigue, fast-twitch fibres adapt to aerobic work, improving endurance.

Structuring Your Long Run

change the nature of your long run as your training plan progresses.

1. Base Phase: Gradually increase your long run distance each week and maintain an easy pace. Build your endurance to lay a foundation for race-specific training.
2. Sharpening Phases: Maintain endurance with long runs as you incorporate two or three race-specific workouts elsewhere in your week. You don’t necessarily need a weekly long run in this phase, it can be less often; it depends.

Easy Pace – means you can hold a conversation.

Long Run Distance guidelines

Intermediate-level runners and above might want a distance guideline for their long runs. For someone like me running 5Ks and sprint triathlons/duathlons, my long runs will certainly be well over the half marathon distance.

• Milers/800m runners: A high-level athlete here might run 10–12 miles.
• 5K/10K runners: ~14–18 miles.
• Marathoners: Even intermediate marathon runners will likely aim for 20–22 mile long runs, with variations based on experience and weekly mileage.

The Long Run is a workout, not just a day-filler

Your first job is to feel comfortable running whatever distance you have targetted for your long run. Only then should you tweak it along these lines

• Finish the run at a steady pace – the last 5k at half marathon pace.
• Include surges or pickups of between 20 and 40 seconds @5k pace
• Run segments of your long run at marathon pace eg 3x5k @marathon race pace
  

Remember the goals for the current phase of your training: aerobic development, race simulation, or fatigue resistance.

If you add these tweaks to your long run and then need to spend 3 days recovering, you might not yet be comfortable with the long run. Tone it down a notch and avoid jeopardizing the gains from your other weekly workouts.

A Long Run Guide for novice runners

Novice runners might want to think about running time rather than distance—build up to one and a half to two and a half hours.

Novice runners anticipating a 6-hour marathon might even want to consider honing their skills first at shorter distances.

Long Runs and Rides for the Triathlete and duathlete

My rule of thumb is for my generic long ride to take twice as long as my long run. Let’s say a two-hour run or a 4-hour ride would form part of my training, even for a sprint distance multisport event.

When not following a plan for my preferred shorter events, I would ride longer than that at weekends, linking my long rides with social group rides, and I’d be achieving multiple 100-milers, also with faster 100-milers, if I had longer distance riding goals that year.

Providing you are comfortable with your long-distance ride and run durations, you could do the following to maintain your aerobic capacity.

1. Alternate your ‘long’ day each week between a long run one week and a long ride the following week, or
2. Alternate your ‘long’ day on the third week to be a 2-hour ride and one-hour run for triathletes; or an hour run, a 2-hour ride and a 30-minute run for duathletes.

With HIM/Ironman training, you will be completing even longer, and more frequent ‘long’ runs (rides), perhaps aiming to total over 20 hours in your peak distance week, much of that at an easy level of exertion.

Long Runs and Age

Ability rather than age is the limiter.

I regularly train with some guys who are in their 50s, 60s and one almost in their 70s. Admittedly, they are very good triathletes. They are quite capable of executing anything said in this post. I don’t think any are especially genetically superior; they’ve ‘just’ been training for the last 40-odd years!

the Danger of Testing

Determining your training zones is a great idea.

However, novice-to-intermediate level athletes will certainly find that their modelled Zone 2 speed/heart rate/power cannot be sustained for over 2 hours of running. Your Sunday long runs will inadvertently morph into a tempo run – you don’t want to do that.

Revisit some of the points above.

If you want to use tech specifically to support your long-run/long-ride exertion levels, consider tools like Suunto DDFA or Inigo’s alphaHRV CIQ tool for Garmin. To some degree, these tools give your actual endurance (Z2) levels in real time. Perhaps prompting you to take things easier than the zones derived from 30-minute maximal efforts might otherwise suggest. One downside of using them is that they can lead to progressively slower speeds during the long-run workout when you should have started slower.

Hills, Heat & Altitude

Generally, you should add race specificity as race day approaches. That means that you should add hills in preparation for a hilly race, heat in preparation for a race likely to be hot, or altitude in preparation for a race at altitude.

Modest hill, altitude, and heat adaptations will likely take at least 2 weeks to achieve, more realistically 4 weeks. You could seek to add them to your long runs at the start of your training; however, these adaptations need maintenance or exploitation; otherwise, you could lose any gains you make within a month.

• If training indoors, you could use an inclined treadmill or KICKR CLIMB to simulate gradients if you don’t live near any hills.
• Heat adaptation is harder to trick your body into – there are heat suits. You could use CORE to measure heat load and adaptation.
• Similarly, you could sleep in an oxygen tent at home to stimulate elevation-like responses.

Note: Some of these race-specific adaptations are significant. For example, heat training can add 2 points to your VO2max (i.e. turn your VO2 of 56 into 58 in a relatively short period). Significant gains can be made if you have the time, resources and motivation – Google it if you don’t believe me.

More advanced athletes could consider incorporating these adaptations into their weekly long sessions.

Long Run Take Out

Be realistic about your long-run abilities and tailor your training to what you can do, not what you’d like to be able to achieve.

Build volume first. Get comfortable with it, and only then add intensity.

Add race specificity to your long run as race day approaches.

What’s important to you in your long-run?