The Long Run

 Cap’n Ron claims the long run is the key to marathon training. I can’t say I fully disagree, and for the sake of this column, let’s just say that I actually agree. Fine. The long run is king. But what is a long run?

For my first few marathons I was (loosely) following training programs that had weekend long runs of 14, 16, 18, 14, and 20 miles, in that order. Scattered in between those weekly knee breakers were some slow days, some short runs, some speed work, and some “tempo” runs, whatever those are.

Then for one marathon I tried a new theory that I read about (or made up on my own, I can never tell which is true). In this plan mileage didn’t matter, it was all about time. I could run as slowly as I wanted as long as I ran consistently for two hours, two and a half hours, three hours, etc. The longest of these runs was 4 hours, hopefully exceeding the amount of time I would spend on the marathon course.

In this plan that I am now more and more convinced I made up, the idea was that it was all about training your body to put forth a consistent effort for the duration of the race. Train it to be active for four hours. That marathon never happened for me after breaking my leg (yep) on a long run. Nice.

So now I am in the meat of my training for the upcoming Seattle 26.2, and instead of focusing on one long run a week, I am following a training plan I found in a box of cereal. This plan deemphasizes the “long” run and has a lot more miles scattered throughout the week. My “easy” days are 8-10 miles, but I am supposed to run them slowly. There is some speed work, which I hate and try to get out of in any way possible, and there are some “longer” easy runs. The longest of these is 18 miles.

So let me get to the weirdest part of all of these training plans that are out there: not one of them has runners train at the full marathon distance. Seems weird, right? The theory is that somehow the excitement and importance of race day makes up for the difference in distance trained versus distance raced. I’m not buying it, mostly because every time I get up to my training mileage in a race, the wheels come off.

And get this: you are supposed to run your long runs at a pace 30-45 seconds slower than your projected race pace! So not only do we not train to the distance, we don’t train to the pace either? I’m getting confused.

But these gurus of marathon training claim it works, so twice or three times a year I dutifully make a calendar with some big ass numbers on it and I start running. And most of the time the race goes ok, but usually something bad happens to a foot, a muscle, a joint, or my brain.

So far, with a little over six weeks of training left, I am sticking to my plan better than I ever have before. I’m running my long runs slowly and I’m not pushing over twenty miles. So far so good, including today’s 18 miler at just under 9:00/mile. Now, in theory, that means 26.2 at 8:15/mile on race day, right?

And now I just jinxed myself. Great.