212. The 20 mile Long Run

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HOW LONG SHOULD YOUR LONG RUNS BE:THE 20 MILE LONG RUN RULE 

 Everyone who has trained for a marathon has probably googled ‘marathon training plan’ at some point. Most of the plans you find on google are going to encompass a ‘20 mile long run’. But do you need to do a 20 mile long run to finish a marathon? Or a better question might be: could doing a 20 mile long run actually have less benefit than doing a 16 miler? We are going to do a deep dive into what the research of Jack Daniel’s an exercise physiologist says about long runs. There are many guidelines he has for long runs and we will touch on the main 3:

Most long runs should be done at an easy pace

Long runs are stressful on the body

No need to add in pace work until the body is used to the distance

Your long runs should be no more than 30% of your weekly volume

There can be exceptions to this rule

Guideline to think about

Considering the benefits of medium long runs and back to back long runs

Your long runs should be limited to 2.5-3 hours

Running over 3 hours has an increased risk of injury

Running over 3 hours you start to lose benefits

Later in the podcast we will do a deep dive on what you might do if you are only covering 14 miles in 3 hours. We share the concept of back to back long runs that might be the missing link in getting your fitness up to run 26.2 miles without physically breaking you. Back to back long runs are used by endurance athletes who train for ultra marathons. No 100 miler runs 80 miles during a ‘training run’, so why do people training for 26.2 mile run 20 miles in a training run?

Let’s take a deep dive into what this might mean for your long runs

Long runs are a BIG stress on the body! Because of that, we need to follow some rules to keep the risks for injury and prolonged recovery to a MINIMUM!

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✅ 33% RULE: The long run should not be more than 33% (⅓) of your total weekly mileage! Sticking to this rule or close to this rule will decrease your risk for injury. Athletes who are doing more like 50% of their weekly mileage in one run will likely need to take extra time off the following week only to repeat the cycle again the following week. If you do a lot of aerobic cross training or have a strong background in the sport, you may be able to get away with a higher percentage.

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✅ 10% RULE: Don’t increase your long run mileage by more than 10% each week. This can also decrease the risk for injury!

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✅  3 HOUR RULE: We like to cap long runs at 3 hours max! Research has shown that your body gets the most physiological aerobic benefits from runs between 60-90 min in duration AND that runs over 3 hours start to have diminishing returns. The risk for injury becomes much higher! This means that many athletes should incorporate back to back long runs instead of one 20 mile long run. The risks just don’t outweigh the benefits when it comes to running longer than 3 hours (for marathon training)

BACK TO BACK LONG RUNS

 We have discussed the long run guidelines on previous podcasts. Some of the guidelines include: capping long run at 3 hours & capping long run at 33% of weekly mileage. Some athletes do the math on this then come to calculate that they may not ever running 20 miles. This is part of the issue. The idea that athletes think they need to run 20 miles to successfully run a marathon and not hit the wall. Hanson’s Method was one of the first pioneers that showed if we cap that long run at 16 miles, we can get people who have never BQed to run that BQ breakthrough race. I have seen a lot of people get a breakthrough race with this method. The hanson’s method really looks at the entire week instead of just that one long run. There is also a medium long run during the week. The idea is that you are the compilation of the entire week, not just the weekend long run.