Long Distance Running
How I train for races
First of all, I’m not an expert. I’m not a doctor. I’m not a trainer. I’m equipped to hand out as many grains of salt as you may need when reading about how I personally think about training for long-distance running. If you are interested in following along with my current half-marathon training, you can follow me on Instagram where I plan to talk about my progress as I train.
I hated running when I was in the Army but I managed to serve for 20 years, even though running was always part of our day-to-day routine. Many days started with some pushups, situps, and a few miles of running in formation. Formation running may have been the reason I hated running! I don’t think I’d want to do that, even now.
It wasn’t until after I turned 50 that an old Army buddy of mine talked me into running a half-marathon. We settled on a race halfway between the cities where we live and ended up running the Mercedes-Benz Half-Marathon in Birmingham, AL. I used an app on my phone to train for that race (Runkeeper) that had built-in training plans. I had never run more than 8.1 miles at a time (Great Aloha Run 1994) before I started this training plan. I picked a finish goal of 2 hours because it was a round number and it was a common benchmark for amateur runners that I saw online quite a bit when doing some research. I didn’t even consider myself a runner yet, but it wouldn’t be long until it became an obsession.
I broke the 2-hour mark during training so the race was a little melodramatic when it came to breaking my goal time. I finished with a time of 1:50:52. Clearly, I had sandbagged my goal time! But with no experience running this sort of distance, it was all just a guess. This leads me to a piece of advice for a beginner:
For your first race, your goal should be to finish! Upright, if possible!
This is a very common adage among runners when lending advice to beginners and it really is good goal for a first timer. Your first race is going to be a personal record (PR) regardless of the time and it will make future goals much more realistic since you have a baseline time. After that first finish, you are able to set a much more realistic finish time for the next race, and you will have a race-pace goal.
When I’m training, the focus for me is always on pace. I want to have a specific pace range to run while doing any workout, and everything is based off my race pace. I use a Garmin watch while training, so I get notifications if I fall outside of the range during the workout. There are 4 different categories of runs that I use for training:
Easy Run: The “easy”refers to the pace of the run, not the distance. Easy runs should be run at a pace that you would have no trouble running for an hour or two. If you have a goal to run the race at 10:00/mile, then you shouldn’t be running easy runs much faster than 12:00/mile. The slow end of the range isn’t very important, but I’d have my watch set at a range of 12-13 minutes/mile. Think of easy running as an active recovery run. It’s giving your body time to recover from some of the harder workouts that are part of training. If you are posting your workouts on social media, do not worry about the pace being seen by others, and don’t try to run faster than easy pace and then call it easy. Easy runs are not for egos, and if you let your ego get in the way, your harder workouts will suffer because of it. Just remember, if you want to run faster, you have to slow down! (during easy days)
Pace Run: (aka Tempo Run) The Pace Run includes some miles run at your race pace. This is going to get your body used to running at the race pace without totally burning yourself out. During the training cycle, the distance increases over time. As an example, if you’re training for a half-marathon, the pace miles will start at 3 miles. You start by running 1.5 miles at your easy pace, then run the 3 miles at your race pace, and finally, cool down for another 1.5 miles. Every three weeks, the distance increases. They go up to 10 miles for a marathon or 7 miles for a half, but the warm-up and cool-down distances do not change. Focus on how it feels to run at this pace and don’t worry too much about how unlikely it might seem to be able to hold this pace for the entire race! It’s going to seem hard. Pace runs should be challenging! Trust the training!
Interval Run: These workouts are where you can increase speed. They are run once per week during the training cycle. You will run these faster than your race pace but over shorter distances than pace runs. These workouts also include a 1.5-mile warm-up and cool-down. The distances of the intervals range from 400m (12x400m intervals) all the way to 3 miles (2x3 mile intervals). The recovery between intervals varies based on the length of the interval, and you can either walk or jog for the recovery. (I don’t like to walk!) For the 400m, the recovery is also 400m. For the 2x3 mile, the recovery is a full mile. The paces that you should run these intervals should be around 5K-pace for the shorter intervals, and 10K-pace for the longer ones. Again, if your race pace is 10:00/mile, the 5K pace is about 9:10/mile, and the 10K pace is about 9:30. You should be able to find a race-equivalency calculator without too much effort using Google, but this is the one that I use. The interval runs should be very hard! If you could do several more intervals after you have finished, you’re probably not challenging yourself, you sandbagger!
Long Run: These runs are not unlike easy runs in that the pace range overlaps slightly. If your easy-pace range is 12-13:00 per mile, then your long run pace will be about 11:00-12:30 per mile. When doing these workouts, keep in mind that you are not on fresh legs like you will be on race day. If you’re running a 12-mile Long Run for a marathon training plan, you’re not simulating the first 12 miles of the race, you’re simulating the last 12! You’re starting with tired legs from the week of training you just went through, so don’t get down when you finish exhausted! Long runs will test your ability to run on very tired legs and it will take a toll on you mentally as well. One of the ways I challenge myself with long runs is to run the last mile faster than the others. I don’t do this every week, but if I feel really good that day, I go for it. This is a huge confidence builder during training, and it really helps with the mental side of running, and demonstrates that you are not just holding on at the end. I will run it right on the edge of the fast end of the range, and maybe even a few seconds faster. Just don’t go too crazy, because the Interval run is in 2 days!
My week is set up like this:
Monday: Easy | Tuesday: Interval | Wednesday: Rest/Cross-train | Thursday: Pace | Friday: Easy | Saturday: Easy | Sunday: Long
If you’re interested in learning more about this type of training, I recommend reading Hansons Marathon Method. I used this method to bring my marathon PR from 3:50:50 (NYC 2017) down to 3:41:38 (Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon) and my half-marathon from 1:50:35 down to 1:42:52. I’ll be writing more about my training as I progress through this training cycle when I’ll run my 8th half-marathon in Auburn, AL in February 2023.