I believe everyone should do their long runs. From the track sprinters to the casual joggers.
It’s the first run to put into your weekly plan if you only had one run per week. That’s how essential a long run is.
And I learnt that the hard way.
Keeping my story short, in 2018 I kept going for races almost every weekend. I didn’t do any long runs at all. Maybe 1 or 2 the whole year.
My performance suffered. I wasn’t able to last during races because my aerobic engine wasn’t build up yet even though I had quite good leg speed.
Okay, you know how long runs can benefit you by improving your aerobic fitness, and improving your running efficiency, making you run easier at the same pace.
Disclaimer: I’m not a coach, I’m here to share my experiences and what I’ve learnt from pros, books and youtube videos so that you don’t make the same mistakes I made and give you information I wished I had when I started out. If you are a coach, please feel free to agree or disagree in the comments below. That let’s me know if my current understanding is True or False. That way we all get to learn!
Now, let’s dive straight into how long should your long runs be.
I believe your long run distance is not the same for everyone. I think there are 2 main factors determining the length of your long runs. First would be your running experience. For example, Kipchoge’s 2h runs are about 40km already while some may say 3km is the longest I ever ran. 2nd factor is the race you’re doing. You’ll typically be doing a longer long run if you’re training for a marathon than a 10k.
So with those factors in mind, I’m going to share with you how I decide how long to run my long runs.
Beginners to Experienced
If you are a beginner, maybe 3km is the longest you ever ran, then I suggest applying the 10% rule to your runs. So each week increase the length of your long run by 10% until you hit 10km.
For most athletes, 10km isn’t even considered a long run at all. If you’re a 10k runner, you can do the whole 10k at a pretty hard effort already.
So now we’re at 10km as your longest run. That’s good progress! I remember when 10km was a long run for me. That was back in 2014. You’re at a stage where you could possibly race a 5k, but you’ll only run a 10k for completion and not for time.
With that said, obviously more advanced 5k runners run more than 10km for their long runs. They need a strong aerobic engine too.
So lets say you wanna move up your distance, 10k, 21k, 42k. Will your long runs be more than 42km now?
Nope. 30km is about the maximum distance most athletes should do their long runs because of the return of investment isn’t as much anymore. In fact, running more than 30 increases your risk by injury by a lot.
A personal anecdote here: I ran a 30km long run one day because I felt good. The workout was good but the 4 days after that weren’t. I needed rest and the 30km long run was too much for my body to handle. Also because I jumped straight into 30km without slowly building up. I write this here so you can learn from my experience.
Now we got a better picture of long runs being 10km to 30km. Less than 10k, are you even doing a long run? And more than 30k, are you risking an injury? More experienced and ultra runners do go over the 30k mark, but you gotta be real careful to go there.
Even for sub 2h marathoner Eluid Kipchoge, he takes 2 to 3 weeks to recover after running his marathons.
General long run distances
If you’re doing a 5k, your long runs can be from 10-22km. You probably don’t reap as much benefit running longer than 22km so save your legs for the 5k specific track session later in the week.
If you’re doing a 10k, your long runs can be from 14-24km. You would generally want your long runs to be more than your race distance so I believe 14k is a good minimum distance.
If you’re doing a 21k, your long runs can be from 16-26km. Yeah, it’s just a little bit more than the 10km even though the race is doubled. In this case you’re not always doing over your race distance because it may take a huge toll on your body every week. So your long runs for some weeks can be less than 21km.
If you’re doing a 42k, your long runs can be from 18-30km. You would hardly ever touch race distance in your long runs because if you do that every week, you’re likely to get injured.
If you’re a casual runner who does the occasional long run and you have no race coming up, you can follow the 5k long run range of 10-22km just for a maintenance level fitness.
Periodization
Now we got a range to run your long runs. Let’s say 14-24km. But how long do I run every week? That’s where we bring in periodization into the picture. Basically it’s the period of the year/month/week to go harder or easier.
A basic monthly model is a 3 week build and 1 week recover. So you’ll be running a long run every week on the same day. The first week would be 18, next 20, next 22 and the rest week would drop back down to 14km.
So when do we go to 24km? I would put the 24km long runs during the base building period. Often early in the season where you typically want to focus on aerobic base building. Typically that’s January to March/ April. (Also depends on your upcoming races.)
In a typical month (Jan to Apr) of base building, I could do a build of 20,22,24 in 3 weeks then back to 14 or 16k on the rest week. Then as the season progresses (May to Oct), we cut back on our longest runs to prioritize our race specific runs. So its back to 18,20,22km in 3 weeks and 14km on the rest week.
And you could also adjust this plan if you’re doing a 5k, 10k or 42k. Btw, you don’t really have to run 16.0km exactly. It’s just a gauge.
What effort to run at?
There’s only one effort you should be doing all your long runs at and that’s Zone 2. Zone 2 is a very comfortable pace, just a little bit faster than a slow shuffle. About a 60% effort.
In terms of heart rate, I would hardly ever go above 140bpm and lower than 120bpm. I typically average 130-135bpm for the whole run.
In terms of pace, that’s about 5:45 to 6:00 minutes per km for me. I could be faster or slower for you so run according to heart rate.
Why don’t I want to go harder than zone 2 pace? You want to be efficient at slow paces because it translates to better running economy overall. Also, if you go too hard, you may not recover in time for your next hard session.
Conclusion
This isn’t an article to prescribe you a long run plan, it’s just how I decide a long run distance for myself. I give ranges like 14-24km as a general guide and as I said, that will change according to your experience level.
For me, that’s the range of my own long runs because I’ve got a half ironman coming up. So I gotta be training for a 21km run off the bike. And this week is my rest week so tomorrow I would be doing a 16km long run.
Let me know how long your long runs are, or if my article has helped you in deciding how long to run your runs.
Aaroiseverything 