The Long Run Continued . . .

I had 6-8 miles on my schedule for today, and I'm happy to say that I got 8 miles in and felt wonderful. I'm beginning to think my goal of 3:40 might be attainable. I also did some push-ups, running drills, and a core workout.

I already talked about my first big pet peeve with the long run and that is that it should be run at a conversation pace. This is generally about 1 minute to 1.5 minutes slower than your marathon pace. Do you always feel totally drained after your long run? Are you having trouble recovering from your long run? Slow it down.

Next, let's take a look at how this "long run" works. Many people freak out when they first start training for a marathon and look at their training plan and say "my longest run is only 20 miles, how can this be when the marathon is 26.2 miles?" It is not necessary to run a 26 or more mile run to train for the marathon, because the idea is that you are doing your long run with cumulative fatigue on your legs. All of those little short runs you do during the week make your legs tired for the long run. I think the best way to explain it is to think of your long run as the last part of your marathon. This brings me to another one of my pet peeves with the long run. I hear a lot of people say, I don't run the day before my long run, because I want my legs to be "fresh." Why would you want your legs to feel fresh for your long run, when it is suppose to be helping you train for the last part of your marathon, when your legs are going to be tired? After all, I don't think most of us are training to do a long run on the weekend, we are training for a marathon or half-marathon. If are legs aren't fatigued going into our long run then we are simply training to run that 16, 18, 20, or however miles we are running for that long run, not the 26.2 miles we'll be running in the marathon. The same thing goes for you cyclists out there you need to ride the day before your long ride and make sure you are getting those shorter rides in during the week. Sound time consuming? I'm not going to lie, it is very time consuming, but the payoff will be big!