Shaking up the long run

As anybody who keeps up to date with my blog knows, I had a pretty good show a week ago at the Waterloo Half Marathon (results). In this article, I'll explain exactly how that came to pass.

The reason I feel like I can explain exactly how is that I didn't really train that much, but I made it all count. My run training came in two parts: short transition runs and weekly long runs.

Short transition runs aren't going to do a whole heck of a lot of my fitness. The one thing they may have helped with is finishing strong--not necessarily fast, but finishing with good economy on tired legs. Other than that though, transition runs probably won't account for much other run specific gains (they'll be more helpful once the tri season starts).

That leaves the long runs. My long runs have all between 18 and 22km, but like I said, very high quality. The idea was that I'd insert one minute intervals, do them at an ascending pace or have a tempo finish for each long run during the build period in order to have bigger gains for fewer sessions and lower milage.

The purpose of the one minute intervals were to make sure I could produce a faster turnover and drop down to race pace of slightly faster towards the middle and end of the run. I used a fairly long rest period (more than a minute) and did 4-6 in total. The intervals were good because I was recruiting previously unused muscle fibers and being forced to recover from heart rate spikes.

The ascending pace long run had a focus on negative splitting, finishing strong and maintaining economy. This was another technique I used increase the number of muscle fibers recruited during the workout. I kept the workout under control by watching my pace on my Garmin and keeping my heart rate down. Pace usually started at 5:00-5:15 min/km and usually I ran the final 1-3 km at 4:00-4:05 min/km.

Finally, the tempo finish long runs were ran at a slower pace until the last 3-5 km, when the pace dropped to around race pace or slightly lower. I generally tried to hit 3:58 or 3:59 km's, but sometimes hills got in the way of that. I thank the tempo finish and ascending pace long runs for feeling fresh until the last couple of km's last week.

I wouldn't suggest doing either the tempo finish and ascending pace long run more often than every other week for recovery purposes. They have other drawbacks as well in that it becomes tougher to do quality sessions later in the week and still recover properly. You also can't increase your distance that much when you do these because they're pretty tough already.

So there you have it: a fantastic training technique, but tough to use in a busy training schedule. If you do plan to use these workouts, make sure you recover like its your job afterwards.