Planning the Macrocycle: Long Run Volume

Posted on August 20, 2009 by CoachJay

Before we go into detail, let me reiterate two points. First, the reason that volume was a such a low priority when Renee and I started working together was that she was coming of an injury and she simply needed to stay healthy while running. I didn’t care about her volume week in and week out (I never calculated it, though I’m sure she did), but rather I cared about her taking the “next logical step” (that’s a Mark Wetmore term) with workouts that were challenging, yet doable. Second, Renee has had a very good summer of racing, considering her past couple of yeas, and as one of the most active contributors to the site rightly asked, “Why have her run more if she’s had a great season and is close to her PRs?” The short answer is that my primary job is to help her reach her genetic potential and if she doesn’t explore greater running volumes in her training then she will likely never reach her genetic potential. Longer answer can be found here.

With those two points out of the way, lets talk about the volume of her long run.

I should take the time to go through her log, a log she’s keep from her first day on campus at CU (she transferred to CU from Georgia Tech) until she and I started working together this winter, and anally (yes, sometimes you need to be anal as a coach) write down the distance she ran each Sunday during her weekly long run. Having not done that I’m going to guess that she’s not run sixteen miles or more ten times and may have only done sixteen or more miles four for five times in her life (I think she has done sixteen once or twice with me; we had lots of fourteen and fifteen, sometimes finishing on the track with three or four miles at six min pace…in Flagstaff).

I bring this up because at 7:00 pace a seventeen mile long run misses the two-hour barrier by a minute; if she ran on a flat course in Boulder she could no doubt run 6:30 or 6:20 pace the last seven miles if she ran ran the first ten at 7:00 pace, making the seventeen mile run roughly 1:55 in duration. Now, there are tons and tons of fourteen mile runs in her log, some of which were simply “Renee Races” where she tried to catch as many members of the CU men’s team as she could. Why is this important? Because going out hard in the first mile and trying to hold on for 80 or 90 minutes is really difficult, yet starting easy, even slow, then building throughout the run is always easier…and sometimes the athlete feels so good in the last 25% of the run that the long run becomes an empowering, energizing workout. I would argue that a fourteen mile run where she was chasing guys and holding on is more challenging than sixteen miles run progressively faster. Does that mean a seventeen mile long run is the same as her fourteen mile race? I don’t know and that’s the big question because seventeen is the next logical step for her weekly long run; she’s never run that distance consistently and at her training age (seven years? eight years? she definitely not at four or five years) that volume is appropriate.

So is she ready? My answer is yes and my rationale is simple: she’s done at least a half dozen and maybe a dozen runs this year that were 1:30 to 1:40 in duration (90-100 minutes) but then had twenty to thirty minutes of GS IMMEDIATELY following the run.

…re-read that…

Is that the same as running two hours? No. But it does mean she can concentrate for two hours and does mean that her body has fueled aerobic running and then fueled great GS work (the first five to ten minutes would be killer, then the last ten to fifteen would be easier) that was a novel stimulus for her body that late in a workout (note: she would have some sort of drink during the GS, but not well thought out ratio protein/carbs/fat that we will incorporate this coming year). Now, I need to be honest that I’ve only seen one of these workouts (you can watch a video of the workout here) yet I know Renee and I know that she went right into the GS. That’s the key to me – that the GS came immediately after the running and that she had no time to rest physically or mentally. It wasn’t a two hour run, but it was two hours.

Okay, so the next questions in my mind are “How much GS work should we do after a two hour run?” and “How do we need to address fueling and hydration issues given that she and I come from the CU approach which values long runs but rarely has hydration options available?” I’ll wait to discuss these in detail until I’ve thought through the issues, yet I can say for sure that getting her to take fluids will not be a problem as she was very appreciative every time she did a long run with the McMillan Elite group, who had water for her.

As always, I look forward to your comments, so thanks in advance to everyone who take the time to write in.

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  • Rhymenocerous

    It's late and I'm about ready for the knacker's yard so I will pose questions that threaten convention and then retire for the evening, comfortable in the knowledge that I may never wake due to some splinter group of the Lydiard Republican Army firing a rocket-propelled grenade through my bedroom window.

    Do two-hour runs survive the cost/benefit analysis for athletes whose primary goal is to run fast over 5,000 (and even 10,000) meters in nations who have embraced the metric system but, by and large, shun personal hygiene? At what point does the fixation on ever-increasing the volume of the long run become detrimental? Is a monster long run a session that takes too much out of the athlete for what it gives back? Is a monster long run specific enough to even general conditioning of a 5K/10K athlete to justify the added fatigue and indeed slight compromise of overall volume (which we can agree is a vital factor in distance running success)? Is not 90: good enough until the athlete starts to run events that really put a premium on efficient fuel utilization (i.e. the marathon)?
    Obviously these questions were influenced by the post above, but I think they can be applied in a larger context to runners and coaches everywhere, certainly in the US, who seem to really really value the long run. If this is not the proper venue for this discussion, one which will certainly veer off course and become only tangentially related to the original topic, I apologize.

    According to CU dogma, the (hard) long run is emphasized, glorified, even sanctified. There are benefits to doing longer runs, of this there is no doubt. However, at what point does emphasis on increasing the distance of a long run start to hurt more specific sessions (ex. tempo runs, 5x 1km say, etc.) later in the week? For what events are an extra 15-20 min. on Sunday (or whenever a long run is undertaken, contrary to popular belief they can be conducted on any day of the week) less valuable than an extra 5-10: of threshold on Tuesday or an extra 800 at race pace on Friday?

    These are questions I do not know the answers to. Maybe there are well-established postulates that I have been missing because I cannot abide the incapacity of certain individuals to (amongst other things) correctly identify East African athletes and have been watching the World Championships with my television muted. Perhaps I should've just listened to Carol Lewis, maybe this is what she has been trying to tell us all these years. Or, perhaps this topic resides in a grey area and coaches/athletes will benefit from further meditation on the topic and rejustifying their method (a valuable exercise!) in a Microsoft Word document which can be copied and pasted into the comment section of a blog.

    P.S. If the above doesn't provoke thought and discussion I'd also like to say that U2 has been crap since 'Achtung Baby.'

  • http://hamiltontrack.blogspot.com hamiltontrack

    Alright… trying to digest all of that…

    Here is the essential question for me when dealing with an athlete…

    What training process will result in the greatest improvement for that athletes performance?
    I have athletes that NEED to increase aerobically in order to achieve their PRs.
    I have athletes that NEED muscle strength.
    and I have athletes that NEED speed to achieve.

    If Renees needs will be served by increasing volume then that answers the debate. If not, then you might be risking more than you could potentially gain. If her current “long” runs are satisfying the training requirement for that aspect of her running then increasing that will lead to a smaller gain than some other training change might bring. (not sure if that makes sense)

    Would Renee gain more training benefit from using that “long run” time doing something else? Time is limited and should be used efficiently.

    2ndly, is there a mental gain that would come from longer runs? Is there going to be increase in confidence that comes with the success of surviving a suffering event?

    “Confidence comes from knowing that you have survived worse before”

    That is my off the hip reply… i need to think this through a little more…

    and yes the Lyidiard Republican Army has me in their laser sites… too bad they never have time to attack in their 1,000 miles/week lives…

  • http://stevemagness.blogspot.com stevemagness

    Interesting comments so far.

    I'd have to agree that the long is often times overemphasized. it seems like it is ingrained that it is a weekly must.

    I think the simple question is, is Renee's level of general aerobic endurance and strength good enough to reach her goals?

    If it is, then increasing the length of an easy to moderate long run is probably not worth it. More benefit would be recieved from trying to convert that general endurance into something more specific, like increasing the threshold.

    However, if it's not at levels needed to reach her goals. Then the long run serves as a good way to increase general endurance, along with the increase in mileage.
    In addition, making the long run progressive or with a pickup at the end changes the dynamics quiet a bit.

    One other thing to consider is that Jay mentioned in the back of his mind he has to keep the marathon in mind. Considering that fact, then the long run, even if she isn't planning a marathon soon, gets elevated in it's importance. Because then you are concerned with fuel management.

    I almost feel like during an athletes career, unless training for the marathon, the long run and mileage in general should follow a bell curve type progression. When your younger, you need a lot of general work, so the long run, and all general running, is what needs to rapidly increased. You kind of maintain that for a bit, but as you have more mileage under your belt, not as much general endurance work is needed. So the importance of the long run drops off. Essentially, as the athlete progresses, the goal should be slightly less emphasis on general stuff, working more towards specific/supporting that specific work.

    lastly, just a thought I had. But on the hydration thing. Obviously hydration and taking in fluids/carbs/protein can aid with the recovery process. But do you think doing that every long run is beneficial? Part of the point of a long, especially when training for a marathon, is to deplete those carbs stores to try and teach the body how to change it's fuel usage strategy. If you are replacing some of that fuel during the run, then it's never going to get depleted to as significant amount. Which could possibly lessen the adaptation. Just a pet theory of mine. But I think it would make sense to do one out of every 3 or so long runs without any carbs/proteins.

    I also like the idea of GS after a long run. While tough, it seems like it'd be a good way to get some strength endurance.

  • http://coachjayjohnson.com CoachJay

    love the comments – thank you.

    I need to come clean and just say that while I want to help Renee with her short term goals (i.e. the next 10 months) what I really want to do is establish a rhythm in the training that has a weekly long run that helps her learn to utilize fuel – no, helps her to turn lipids into usable energy/sugar – because that is part of running the marathon. I do not think the long run – starting at seventeen this year and working towards running well past the two hour mark (so eventually twenty or longer) – still has a place in 5k/10k training, yet the points above are all well thought out. I have prided myself on keeping Sara's training specific to the next race and that's got to be some small part of her running PRs in all but one race in 2009.

    Plus, just today Vern Gambetta posted the following, so now I have three reasons to rethink this.

    http://www.functionalpathtrainingblog.com/2009/…

    Lots to consider.

  • timmessina

    I'm interested in the reasoning for doing general strength immediately following the run. Do you have your athletes do it after to increase the duration of aerobic activity, or are there additional strength benefits from doing these exercises while being fatigued from the run (as opposed to later in the day after the athlete has recovered from the workout)?

  • mnort

    Some observational data, from a HS coach:
    We did a 5-mile tempo this week (Tuesday). I'll use one senior boy and one junior girl, because they've been in the program a while and had good days.

    Both ran almost the exact same pace (the boy 1-2 secs/mi faster, the girl 1-2 secs slower) than they did for a 4-mile tempo, on the same course, on Sept. 10 last year (nearly a month later into training). Obviously I don't have any equipment to measure blood lactate levels, etc., but I saw that, unlike last year when both pushed pretty hard on the last mile, neither did so Tuesday. We had never in my coaching here run anything longer than about 50-60 minutes, until last winter, when we started working our way toward 75-80 minute runs. Monday, the older kids all ran 70-80 minutes aerboically.

    Here is the GS stuff we've been doing after our long runs:
    1. Donkey kicks
    2. Scorpions
    3. Pushups w/clap
    4. Donkey whips
    5. Lower body crawl
    6. Eagles
    7. Australian crawl
    8. Lateral leg raises w/ feet in all three positions
    9. Groiners
    10. Leg cycles
    11. Hurdle trail leg forward and backward
    12. Lateral leg swing
    13. Linear leg swing w/ bent and straight leg

    Anyway, don't know what that contributes to the discussion other than to say my HS kids seem to be benefitting from longer runs and can handle a fair amount of GS afterwards.

  • http://coachjayjohnson.com CoachJay

    Yes, I have a hypothesis that if do the GS work immediately after the run, especially a long run, is a valid aerobic stimulus.

    GS work is anabolic (building up) where as a long run is catabolic (tearing down) and the GS is a way to “balance” the workout. For women, this is of special importance because up-regulating HGH and testosterone will allow them to training at a high level day in, day out.

    GS work at the end is not something that I think they benefit from in a state of fatigue, yet I do think that hurdle mobility or hill running or anything that has a postural component is important to practice when tired.

  • http://coachjayjohnson.com CoachJay

    Thanks so much Matt and I wish you and your team the best this fall. There isn't anything I can add, other than the fact that in Matt's comment he talks of how athletes look running threshold pace. Sometime in the first couple of weeks coaching at CU Wetmore said to me, “You taught me something about ATs* – you were running too hard to run with the group.”

    Matt is one of the best coaches I've meet and the fact that he's not just looking at the watch/clock but looking to see how comfortable, how controlled that athletes are when running the workout is key.

    Thanks again Matt.

    *AT is Wetmore's version of a threshold run – 8k on the track was typical, but 10k on the track was not unheard. Less for women, usually 6k.

  • Chichikov

    On the long run: obviously we're talking about general rather than specific work here. So why not broaden, as you seem to do with your approach to general strength? Try an easy (7:30 pace?) 17 or 18 miler every three weeks or so, and see how Renee adapts. Maybe it makes her feel great. Maybe stale. Keep doing the hard 14 milers ever once in a while (though a frequent race effort at that distance does seem risky). Maybe do lots of 10 milers around marathon race pace or slightly slower–that seems to be a common denominator between some pretty good milers (Ovett, Scott, these days Fernandez) and people who want to run a marathon some time in the future. No reason the “weekly long run” has to be the same kind of run every week. If it is, you're probably provoking more specific kinds of adaptation than you really want at this point of the season and the career, no? Presumably you want general adaptations like: greater work capacity, greater energy contribution from lipids at a given pace, greater aerobic capacity, improved concentration for protracted work, etc. Surely a broad range of distances and (submaximal) paces are suitable for those goals.

  • http://coachjayjohnson.com CoachJay

    Wow…what a fantastic paragraph. Thank you and please know the athletes will be asked to read it when we resume this fall as my biggest goal with the long run is to do a variety of runs and start to see if there is a one type of run they really enjoy and excel at.

    The one question I have about the specificity of work during a long run is this: if you do a long long run, i.e. well over two hours Renee, just once every three weeks when focusing on the 5k and 10k does that teach to body to utilize lipids, which is the key difference between the 42 km race and the 21 km or 10k/5k distances? We will assume that her legs feel well in the days following this race…not shot, as Ryan Hall refers to in this episode of Competitor Radio

    http://www.competitorradio.com/details.php?show…

    Thanks again Chichikov, I sincerely appreciate your viewpoint.

  • Chichikov

    The most important fuel-related goal is to increase the rate at which she can burn fat (and convert it into forward progress), right? I've read that this tops out at something like 3-hour race pace, though I don't remember the source and anyway it probably varies from person to person. And clearly there's significant contribution from sugars at that pace, too. Nonetheless, an hour at your maximum fat-burning pace seems like an extremely relevant workout (in terms of fuel use) for a marathon. My impression is that guys like Lopes and Steve Jones ran great marathons from doing lots and lots of runs like this and very few if any long-long runs. The tricky part is making sure you don't do it too fast, where your body is relying too much on sugars. You want to keep the pressure on the fat metabolism, I think. Lopes and Jones probably had a great feel for this; Ovett and Scott both did their hard 10-milers with a slightly less accomplished training partner who probably kept them from crossing the line into race territory. One thing you could try is to have Renee 2 to 3 x 1 minute uphill around 3K pace after the hardish hour run. If she's dreading those hills and looks flat on them, she's probably glycogen depleted and got her pace wrong (too fast) during the hour. If she learns to go quick-ish while relying mostly on fat for fuel, she'll feel surprisingly okay on these 1-minute segments and feel like she could do several more (but she shouldn't do them). At least that's my experience with that kind of workout. If every week she does either this, or a 2 hr(+) run, or a 90 minute run at some intermediate pace (plus aggressive GS stuff), that should be lots of lipid work, no? You'd probably cut this stuff back somewhat to a maintenance level during actual 5K-10K season, then gear it back up afterwards. Anyway, please note that I'm not a coach or any kind of authority on this stuff–just throwing some ideas out there. Good luck to you and your athletes, and thanks for your generosity in sharing your knowledge and experience.

  • http://stevemagness.blogspot.com stevemagness

    There's another theory out there that you actually want to push into that glycogen depleted state to put the body into crisis so that it adapts by readjusting the fuel usage. It's theory the Italians work off (Canova, Gigliotti, Berardelli).

    How to do this? Progression runs ending at near MP, alternation workouts in the middle of a long run, and lots of work at Marathon Pace, culminating in 17+milers with significant amount of work at around marathon pace.

    It's intense, because running with glycogen depleted muscles sucks, and unlike most workouts you actually want to hit the point where you start slowing because the slowing indicates glycogen shortage. The last mile or two when you drop off pace is actually what you want, because that's when your putting the stimulus on the body that it needs to adjust so that next time this doesn't happen. So obviously, this is only done on occasional long runs.

    Canova's book through the IAAF has some interesting stuff on long runs and marathon training in general. There's also a good powerpoint presentation by Gigliotti online, I just can't remember where I found it. I'll look around.

  • thomas_t

    Awesome discussion, though first off, let me say that claim U2’s been crap since Achtung Baby is about as controversial as saying that Dave Mathews Band had squeezed its electric violin cum saxophone cum rock band lemon shtick dry by Crash if not Under the Table and Dreaming? Does this mean that U2 sucks? No. (Does it mean DMB sucks? Well…) It simply means sustaining an artistic peak and releasing masterpiece after masterpiece is as difficult to maintain as a physiological peak and running PR after PR.

    But enough on music; however, let me digress a little more to say that I find the idea of the Lydiard Republican Army disproportionally amusing. It shouldn’t be surprising that a group of erstwhile sufferers of OCD otherwise known as distance runners should be so inclined towards dogma. It reminds me of something Emerson (I think) wrote about the early Church, that they enshrined the prophet but killed the poet, or in other words, that all Jesus said was not, well, gospel, but sometimes more akin to the Buddhist idea of a finger pointing at the moon: that we become so obsessed with the directions (the finger) and lose track of the objective (the moon). If its true that there are as many paths to paradise as there are human temperaments, it must also be true that there are equally as many was to achieve success as a runner. As has been noted, it is the results that matter, if you are achieving what you want, what does it matter whether you are a Lydiardist, a Danielsaniac, a Canovian, or even a Penguin?

    Sorry, don’t know why I am being so metaphysical this morning. Like, I said, great discussion. I really like Steve’s comment about distance running being a bell curve. This summer we focused a good deal on the long run, especially edging it out closer to the Daniels’ formula 25% of weekly mileage (yes, dogma rears its head), in part to reap the physiological benefits, as well as making easy days easier (a 4 mile run in the middle of a forty mile week versus another 5.5 to 6 mile run). But reading through the discussion I began to question the validity of what I’d been trying to accomplish (granted not a bad thing) but what Steve says makes a lot of sense to me, perhaps because it fits conveniently with my own philosophies, that one, as a high school coach, I want to ensure my athletes enjoy the sport of running and become lifelong runners (or at least pursue lifelong fitness through another medium) and secondly, that those who want to, are prepare to continue running at the next level, whether it is at the DI or DIII level. In someways, the long run seems to be more pertinent to the latter goal, and yet, when many of our seniors share their favorite memories at senior night, their favorite run/workout is one of the two over distance runs we do every year. Anyway, hope this isn’t a thread killer. Rhymenocerous, please give my regards to the Hiphopopotamus.

    tct

  • http://coachjayjohnson.com CoachJay

    Great comment, both for it's readability and it's content. Many roads to Rome, no doubt.

  • Chichikov

    Steve: that sounds like really specific work, the sort of thing your marathoners would do when your 800m runners are doing their gut-wrenching speed-endurance sessions. Those sorts of sessions that put your body in chemical crisis are great for honing the edge, but my impression (to mix metaphors drastically and use one from Canova) is that Renee still has to build a lot of her aerobic house. It seems that there are still many benefits to gain, at relatively low cost, by gradually increasing volume across a range of paces. Or as you said–more general stuff early, more specific stuff later. I think that Jay is saying that Renee is still in the early (to mid) part. I do agree with you, though, that we have a lot to learn from the Italians when it comes to specific preparation for the marathon.

  • http://www.astwoodconsulting.co.uk/ excelmacrotraining

    I also like the idea of GS after a long run. While tough, it seems like it'd be a good way to get some strength endurance.Thanks to share this blog.

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