Longer or Faster? Part 1

I recently sent a questionnaire to my local run group to get insights on how these runners view the long run. In the following three newsletters I will look at various topics derived from these findings.

In today’s newsletter we will start by looking at the history and purpose of the long run.

I think we can agree that the general purpose of the long run is to develop the aerobic system; get the heart pumping, the muscles working, glycogen to be depleted - this depletion is a signal for the body to rebuild or better build back the stores of glycogen available to the muscle tissue, as well as elevate overall mitochondrial development.

The long run was popularized by Arthur Lydiard through the success of his small group of world class Kiwi athletes. His principles then integrated with other leading coaches like Bowerman in the 60s and 70s. 

Pre Lydiard there was much more of an interval paradigm. Hard and fast with breaks, notable examples; Igloi and Zatopek. Note that they were doing these interval sessions for 2 to 3 hours at a time. So you could argue that these were long runs in their own right. But post Lydiard, the long run as we now know it became the praxis - you’ve got to run long to be good. This became the given truth.

However, this is a truth with modification. The long runs of Lydiard and other elite-level coaches were never the Long Slow Distance (LSD) runs promoted by former Runner’s World editor Joe Henderson in the 1969 book Long Slow Distance: The Humane Way to Train. 

Henderson’s Long Slow Distance (LSD) was intended to make running accessible and enjoyable, reducing the emphasis on performance marks often associated with the prevailing elite training regimens. 

I will argue that it is much of Henderson’s philosophy (rather than Lydiard’s) that has shaped how recreational athletes approach the long run.  

The long run for Lydiard’s athletes was not slow. It was, quote “a strong aerobic effort, between jogging and racing - in theory, 70%-99% of your aerobic capacity to finish in a pleasantly tired state.”

His long run was a 22-miles (35-kilometers) course known as the Waitarere Road Circuit near his home in Auckland. The hilly course provided natural flux or fartlek stimulus; with typical paces between 3:43 to 4:02 per kilometer.

His long-run focus was two fold:

1. The purpose during base building was general aerobic development and to gauge progress.

2. During the sharpening phase where he would do 5 days of interval sessions a week, here the single long-run was all about aerobic maintenance.

For context, we should also point out that Lydiard’s star runner was an 800m specialist and 1960 Rome Olympic Gold Medalist called Peter Snell. He was a physiological unicorn. Very few modern 800m runners would train this way.

That said, Lydiard’s general training principles are very similar to modern-day approaches even though they are now 50+ years old!  It’s amazing how much Lydiard got right without science and based on just trial and error testing training methods on himself.

Back to LSD, I’m not knocking Henderson’s intent or influence, and if you run for fun, and/or general fitness and well-being, I’d be the last to try to change your mind. But if you have a performance goal I think you may need to reposition the long run in your training philosophy.

Coach and runner Pete Magill states that:

1. The long run should account for 15 to 25% of your week’s total volume

2. Your long run should not exceed 150% of the length of your regular distance runs, although this rule can be broken for low-mileage runners or those who train less than 5 days a week.

There are also similar recommendations from other coaching systems with a proven relationship to injury risk for going over these guidelines.

With the majority of my respondents stating around 25 kms for their long runs this would necessitate a minimum weekly volume of 100 km.

I see these percentages as a guideline rather than a rule, but they do beg the question of what is the optimal distance and related stimuli that your body can truly absorb and benefit from given your training history.

I would argue that instead of seeing the long run as a two-plus-hour keystone workout, it should be repositioned and become much less about grinding out mileage and more about staying aerobically fit and targeting specific adaptations depending on where you are in the training cycle. It is a supplemental, not dominant, training component.

Other goals like the accumulated weekly volume of shorter-distance runs and the percentage of weekly volume focused on frequent, controlled threshold, may be better proxies for developing your running ability.

Next week we will look at what this might mean in practice.