Long Run Workouts: Take Your Performance To The Next Level

Updated: Jul 16

Sunday long runs can be tedious, repetitive and boring, yet they are the most important run of your week during your base phase and are vital for you to keep up throughout the year. The benefits of long runs include:

Increased Vo2 max
Increased red blood cell count
Improved utilisation of oxygen
Increased how much oxygen cells can carry
Improved mental strength
Increase strength
Teaches body to use fat as a fuel

How do long run sessions provide additional benefits

Long run workouts help you get more benefits from your long runs and spice them up a bit to make them more interesting for you.

Long run workouts require you to not session the day before or day after the long run in order to recovery properly. But these long run workouts develop you aerobically a lot faster and give you many more added benefits. These type of long runs are used by some of the worlds best such as Kenenisa Bekele to be able to get huge benefits from a long run and then only have to run 2 other sessions per week- allowing more time for recovery!

Added benefits:

Can get a tempo and a long run in 1 session
More recovery days per week = Better adaptations
Increases lactate threshold
Makes long runs more interesting
Increase bodies ability to store glycogen even better than normal long runs
Increases aerobic capcity faster
Gets you mentally ready for race day (learn to run fast when tired)
Teach body to get rid of lactate acid when fatigued and when running at a fast pace

Example Long Run Workouts:

Arthur Lydiard Long Run

This is a long run which was first introduced to us by revolutionary coach Arthur Lydiard and for this long run you will most likely want to adapt the length of the total run and the reps.

This in my opinion is the perfect long run to develop yourself aerobically at the highest level possible. Through this long run your body will learn to get rid of lactate acid whilst fatigued and moving at a fast pace.

This 22 mile run consists of:

3 mile warm up
3 miles at tempo effort uphill
1 mile slow downhill
7 miles at tempo pace whilst glycogen stores are depleting
8 miles easy to the finish (including half a mile uphill at about the 20 mile point- athletes hit this hard)

Marathon Pace Long Run

This is perfect for your aerobic base and learning how to hold marathon pace when you feel tired (this is one of the best things you can do in marathon training)

Example marathon pace sessions:

20 min warm up, 4x 15 mins marathon pace (3 min easy pace to recover), 20 min warm down
20 min warm up, 60 mins marathon pace, 20 mins warm down

These sessions can be adjusted to fit your length of your long run.

Tempo Long Run

This is a workout similar to the one before but is more suited to runners who specify in shorter distances. Tempo pace is slightly faster than marathon pace, so it works better for shorter long runs to put a shorter amount of fast running in.