Long Runs Explained
Published January 15, 2025
Below, I explain how I assign long runs, why athletes do strides in the last 20 minutes of the run, and how you can "extend the aerobic stimulus."
If these ideas are new to you, you'll want to read below (which will take about 8 minutes to read, yet it's worth it).
But first...
This Weekend's Boulder Running Clinics
It's going to be a fantastic weekend even though it's going to be extremely cold and we'll have a bit of snow. Last year we had 40 people go out for a run at 7 a.m. in cold weather, and I'm sure we'll have a similar group this year.
If you can't make it, don't worry, the videos will be on sale the first week of February.
This year the videos are only on sale Monday through Thursday, February 3-6.
You'll be able to purchase the 2025 videos or invest in the "bundle" that has every video from 2018-2025. That's almost 80 videos!
Okay, now let's talk about how to use the long run in your training.
Long Runs
Let’s talk about the long run. There’s a good chance that you haven’t been assigning a long run exactly like the one I’m going to teach you. Even if you’ve had the long run as a cornerstone of your program, we’re going to tweak it a little bit by adding strides in the last 20 minutes of the run.
Obviously, the long run is a great way to build the aerobic engine. It builds the athlete’s attention span for hard work as well. And it builds their mental toughness, as they’ll do their fastest running of the day at the end of the run.
What is less obvious is that a well-executed long run is the simplest way to learn to run by feel.
Running by feel is a cornerstone of my system, and it’s one of the few skills runners need to learn to both race to their potential and stay injury-free.
If an athlete is running 60 minutes and they run too fast in the middle of the run, slowing down in the final minutes of the run, that’s a problem… but one that they can correct in the next workout or long run. They simply didn’t know how the run should feel and misjudged the rhythm they could maintain for 60 minutes.
The next workout will likely be a โfartlek workoutโ, which is another workout that will teach them to run by feel. When the next run is on their schedule, they’ve got a better shot of running a negative split run (where the second half of the run is faster than the first half).
We’re not going to worry about paces for our long runs. We’re going to focus instead on making this a challenging run. That said, it’s fine if the athlete keeps the data on their GPS and looks at it when the run is finished.
Finally, another key aspect of my training is that your hard days need to be hard and your easy days need to be easy.
The long run is a hard day. We’re not simply “getting in the miles” or worse, doing a “long slow distance” run that was popularized decades ago. We don’t want athletes shuffling through long runs, with poor posture, and as I’ll explain below, a key reason we do strides is to make sure athletes run with good posture.
Minutes or Miles?
I start a season by assigning the long run by minutes. We want the athlete to “win the day,” even if they have a sub-par day and slow down in the final minutes of the run. If the assignment was 60 minutes and they got in 60 minutes, that’s a great day.
Another reason to assign the run based on time is that when the weather is bad or extreme, the athlete needs to get in the duration of the run.
An athlete who typically runs 10 miles at 7-minute pace obviously runs 70 minutes on that day. But on a day when the roads are icy and the wind is howling, or the heat and humidity is oppressive, they aren’t going to be able to run 7-minute pace and say they ran controlled (though they may be able to run 7-minute pace if they treat the run like a race).
If the athlete (and the coach?) is insistent that they get in 10 miles, they’ll not only run more than their normal 70 minutes, but they will be overly fatigued from the run. Forty-eight hours later, they may not be ready for another challenging day.
The reason I assign long runs based on time is that a) if the weather is overly challenging or b) the athlete simply doesn’t feel well, they can still meet the objective of the day – a run for a given amount of time. Said another way, we want the athlete to “win the day” when they run a long run.
I know that many programs have traditional runs where former athletes have established times/standards/course records. Coaches and athletes know that when a young woman can run a given 10-mile loop in ___ time she’s fit and ready for a great cross country season.
A great compromise is to assign long runs based on minutes in the first 4-6-8 weeks of the season, and then have mileage assignments after that, if that’s best for your program. To be clear, I think having one day a week where you have a mileage assignment is great… and that’s a long run.
A Long Run with Strides
I assign strides in the last 20 minutes of a long run for several reasons.
The first reason is that we want to ensure that at the end of the run – when the athlete is fatigued – that they run with good posture. So long as the athlete remembers to “run up tall” when they do their strides, they’ll run with good posture, while they’re fatigued.
Second, let’s look at the long run through the framework of the car metaphor.
We must build the aerobic engine, strengthen the chassis, and rev the engine throughout the week and throughout the year.
We’re building the aerobic engine with the run. Following the long run, we’ll go into a challenging post-run routine to strengthen the chassis. Wouldn’t it be great if we could get in the third component and rev the engine?
Many high school athletes are going to run five or six days a week. If they don’t rev the engine during the long run that’s either 20 percent of the week they’re missing this work, or 17 percent of the week. We should aim to rev the engine every day we run, except for the day an athlete is ill or mentally fatigued and just needs to run easy.
Two more things…
When athletes do strides in the last 20 minutes of the run, the pace tends to increase. This reinforces the idea – and the feeling – that as the workout goes on, the faster they run.
We’ll want athletes to go “fast, faster, fastest” in workouts and races. Strides in the last 20 minutes of the long run gently force the athlete to do this.
And this reinforces the feeling that they’ll be able to go “fast, faster, fastest” in races.
The specific reason for the pace increasing is not only because for 20-30 seconds they’re doing a stride at 5k effort, but also because the pace in the 10-20-30 seconds following the stride is going to be faster than what they’ve run up to this point. So long as they don’t run slower than the pace they ran prior to the strides, they’ll have a significantly faster pace in the last 20 minutes of the run.
The final reason to do strides is psychological.
Let’s say the athlete is assigned 70 minutes. Most athletes will start to get a little nervous at the 45-minute mark. This is about as long as they run on their easy days and in just 5 minutes, they’ll need to run 4-6 strides while running for 20 more minutes.
Veteran athletes soon get accustomed to the mental aspect of the run, yet younger athletes are typically a bit intimidated by the run… and I think that’s a good thing.
Racing is hard.
And PRing means you’re going to be uncomfortable. If a younger athlete finds the long run as the hardest day of the week, and is uncomfortable in the last 20 minutes, that’s a good thing.
Assigning The Long Run
A decade or two ago the rule of thumb was that the long run should be 20 percent of an athlete's weekly volume (i.e., mileage). A 40 mile a week runner would do an 8-mile run, and the 50 mile a week runner would do a 10-mile run.
To be clear, I assign all the running in minutes and not miles at the start of the season, but let's keep using miles in this example to illustrate the point.
An athlete who can handle 40 miles a week of running can handle a 9-mile run. And an athlete that is running 50 miles a week can handle at least 11 miles, if not 12, for a long run.
What you'll find in my training is that the long run volume is much more than 20 percent, so long as the athlete makes it a challenging run.
Writing The Workout
We need to add the strides in the last 20 minutes of the run. If we had an athlete that was going to run 60 minutes, then we'd write:
Long Run – 60 minutes. At the 40-minute mark do 4 x 25 seconds at 5k effort, with as much recovery as needed.
If the run was 75 minutes, then it's you simply saying "at the 55-minute mark do 4 x 25 seconds at 5k effort..."
Progressing the Strides
I like to start with 4 x 25 seconds for the first 2-3 weeks, then go to 5 x 25 seconds for 2-3 weeks. From there, you can assign 5-6 x 30 seconds. I don't assign more than 6 strides at 30 seconds. This is enough work for an older athlete to rev the engine and make this day very challenging.
Again, they get as much recovery between the strides as they need. That'll typically be 2-3 minutes, but it could be a bit more. After the first couple of long runs, they need to run their long run rhythm and not easy pace between the strides.
Here's the โprogression of strides PDFโ.
Once the run is over, we go straight into...
Post-run Work
This is going to be hard physically and challenging mentally. Combine those aspects, and we have an opportunity to both strengthen the chassis and build the athlete's attention span for hard work.
Commit to doing this work immediately after the run.
Why?
We want to "extend the aerobic stimulus." When they finish the run, their heart rate is high. When we go directly into the post-run work to keep their heart rate elevated, thus extending the aerobic stimulus.
What's great about this approach is that the athlete gains more aerobic fitness without pounding the pavement. Not only is this a great way for younger athletes to make big jumps in fitness, it's also a way for older athletes to gain more fitness while keeping them injury-free (because their running volume is lower).
The two times when you'll have to take a break at the conclusion of the run are weather-related.
If it's oppressively hot and humid, have them take some time after the run, get some water, then do just 5-10 minutes of mobility work and call it a day. On days when it's bitterly cold outside, get them inside and have them change into a dry shirt, then knockout the mobility work.
As I said earlier, doing post-run work at the end of the long run "builds their attention span for hard work." The first 5-10 minutes of all my post-run routines are challenging. When an athlete can do that work with focus, it's molding them into an athlete who can both focus in the final reps of a race pace workout, and focus in the last 20-30 percent of a race.
Common Questions
The most frequent question I get is simply this:
"I thought the point of the long run was to get in time on their feet, and not make it so hard that they can't do two workouts a week."
That's fair.
And...
My experience working with coaches in both the โXC Training Systemโ and the โTrack Training Systemโ is that when they follow my system, virtually every athlete stays injury-free. And runs PRs.
It's fair to assume this is due to the focus on post-run work, but that's not the whole story.
Running hard twice a week can lead to PRs, and keep an athlete injury-free.
The aerobic gains athletes will make doing this type of long run – with strides and hard post-run work – are remarkable.
If you've struggled to keep kids injury-free, now is the time to rethink what you're doing and make at least one change, if not two, to what you're doing. Dialing back from three hard days a week to two won't mean that your kids plateau.
Another comment is...
"We do a long run, but we do it easier to get in two workouts and a speed development day."
I've done this type of week with professional runners and had great results. And there are some very skillful high school coaches who've coached for a decade or more that do something similar. But for most teams, this is too much "density" - too many hard days in a week (or even in a 10-day period).
If you've struggled to keep all of your kids injury-free, perhaps you should consider a different approach.
If you want to get the first five weeks of training in the โTrack Training Systemโ, plus the post-run progressions kids will do after the long run, get the 40-page โTrack Training Essentials PDFโ for free.
Wow...that was a long one. Thanks for reading! ๐
I'll be in touch next week to share what I learned at this weekend's clinic.
Let's go!
Jay
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This is the perfect handbook for developing runners and it is a perfect complement to a coach because Jay supports all the things we are telling our athletes.
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Jay Johnson
