Heather: What even is the long run? It is subjective. It will vary for all of us.
The length of yours doesn't really matter, but how do you make it longer? That's what I'll be
answering today. [music]
The long run, it goes without saying is your longest run of the week. It's considerably
longer than all of your other runs including your recovery runs. Say, for example, you were training
for a 5k, then it could be something like a 10 to 12-kilometer run. That though is purely an example
and it does depend where you're at with your running and the intensity. That needs to be low,
ideally, a Zone 2, so 60 to 70 of your maximum heart rate. It should just feel light, it should
be conversational, and a pace that you're happy to maintain for a considerable period of time.
I suspect most of you already knew that, but why is the long run important?
We see it as the foundation, the building blocks, for which you can then add on the speed and the
quality on top of. It's teaching your body to become more efficient, so improving its ability to
utilize the available oxygen and energy. Whatever distance you're training for, the long run
plays a vital part. It also helps with your mental strength and that confidence that you know you can
run for a long period of time without getting tired. Knowing all of that, you can see why
you would want to increase the length of your long run, but there are a few rules because you need to
be careful that you don't get injured or a little bit overwhelmed by this increase in distance.
It's that 10% rule that's key here, so not increasing the distance all the time,
it doesn't matter which you're measuring by more than 10% each week. This will give your body
the time to adapt and get stronger ahead of the next run. When you are increasing the long run,
it's best to keep the rest of your training the same, so keep the same intensity and the timeframe
for that. You don't need to drop it down, but you just want to leave that as it is and work on
concentrating on increasing the long run only. [music]
Depending on where you're at and how long you're out running for,
at some point as you progress, you're going to start to need to consider your nutrition.
If you're living somewhere hot, then you're definitely going to need to carry fluids with you.
Once you've reached a run of around 60 to 90 minutes, then you need to think about
fueling during it. Whether that's a gel, some sweets, or whatever it is that takes your fancy,
you'll need something to just top up those energy levels as you're going.
The longer the runs get, the more important your fueling before and after becomes too.
It does depend on preference, but with the long run, you might fancy
a bit of company or maybe even some distraction. If you can get a friend to join you for even
part of it, that will help. There's always music as another option. I'd recommend planning your
route wisely because you'll be running further, so you can explore new areas and it's just going
to keep things a little bit more interesting. The long run is at a low intensity, I know,
but you still need to respect the stress that it's going to be putting on your body because I see,
overall stress of training the short intense session is actually going to give you a
similar amount of stress as a longer but low intense sessions. With that in mind,
you still need to make sure that you've had adequate rest beforehand and you allow your
body to recover fully afterwards. [music]
Increasing a long run is going to be hard, there's no doubt about it, whether that's going to be
figuring out your nutrition or how to hold your pace or even how to motivate yourself and get
yourself up for it. It's going to be different for everybody, and you'll be learning as you go
and you'll be adapting. It's okay to start with to drop the pace off a little bit and
think about it as perceived effort at least for this stage in your training anyway. At the moment,
it might just seem impossible to even imagine running further than you've ever run before,
but keep it to bite-size amounts and it really is very manageable. You might be wondering,
where does it end? Do you just keep increasing it by 10% each week?
Well, no, because you'd end up being an ultrarunner, and that's not the aim here. It
does depend on what the target races that you've got in mind. If you're training for a marathon,
a long run for that could be anything around even 22 miles or 35k, so a considerable distance.
If however, 10k is your target, then your long run only needs to be around 20 kilometers.
Once you've reached that target distance in your long run, you're not going to benefit
that much more by increasing the distance because the amount of damage and stress you're putting
on your body with your long run is going to mean it's going to need extra days to
recover because you can't do your next session. You're either going to be continually giving
your body that stress, and therefore, it won't be able to adapt and get stronger,
therefore, defeating the objective of training. It's recommended that after four weeks of
increasing that long run you actually have a rest and take it back as a considerable distance even
back to where you started four weeks earlier. Say, you've been starting off at a 10k in your long run
and you'd increased it each week by around 10%, you'd be up to about 14 to 15k. Your fifth week,
you could take it back to 10k for that long run, and then you can return to where you
were when you left off, so around 14, 15, and build it up from there. It just gives your
mind and your body that little bit of a break and a refresher so you're ready to go again.
Hopefully, with these tips, you guys can now look forward to your next long run. Good luck with
that. Give us a like if you've enjoyed this video. You can follow us on our social media channels as
well as subscribing here on YouTube. [00:05:27] [END OF AUDIO]