Thoughts on the (Really) Hard, (Really) Long Run?

I came across these comments from Renato Canova on the letsrun forum recently (see below). Excuse the incorrect English as it is not Renato's first language and I pasted as-is. What I want to focus on is his comments about having his athletes do 40km long runs only slightly slower than marathon pace. At first glance this sounds like an unbelievably hard workout, but perhaps it makes sense? After all, he allows for at least a week recovery after the workout and he's trying to simulate race conditions.

Plus, he doesn't do many other long runs in the last three months before the goal race so his athletes are not likely burned out from running long.

I know the world's best triathletes also routinely do this type of training - i.e., racing an Ironman 1-2 months before their goal Ironman. Chrissie Wellington frequently does this I believe and there is no arguing with her results.

From us mere mortals what are your thoughts on this type of training? Or is the 20 miler w/ 12-16 @ MP (or a half marathon race) enough for the rest of us?

Training is something attacking the body, and needs to stimulate the reaction of the body itself. This is called "supercompensation". When there is no stimula, there is adaptation, that is the most important enemy of the performance. In order to give always new stimula to the body, we need to do something new, or in intensity, or in extension, but at the end of the process the top shape is connected with the EXTENSION OF THE INTENSITY.
What I do, for example (especially for marathon) is to extend the ability in running near the pace of the competition. So, I don't use many long runs, during the last 3 months that represent the SPECIAL PERIOD, because for me useless. Which is the reason to run 40 km at 3'30" per km for athletes able running the full marathon under 3' ? It's the best way for wasting time.

So, I put in the program something like 40 km very fast (Mosop before Boston ran at 2300m, up and down, with training shoes, on rough roads, in 2:07:15, that means a full marathon in 2:14. If you cut 6" per km for altitude, racing shoes and tarmac this means a marathon under 2:10 in training. Of course you need about one week for recovering. Abel Kirui ran in 2:09:46 on the mud before WCh, and in all the period had only 2 sessions of long run, but this is the best way for improving the specific endurance).

At least, approaching the specific period of competitions, we need to move to more modulation : high intensity, with the goal to EXTEND it, not to run faster every time with the same volume ; and consequently long recovery, for allowing the body to absorbe the attack of training, and to answer in the right way.

So, we can say that TRAINING WELL IS TRAINING HARD, BUT TRAINING HARD NOT ALWAYS IS TRAINING WELL.

I want to change the "Train hard, win easy" of Kenyan in "Training wellm win easy". The two concepts are not exactly the same thing.

Link to all of his comments: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4213844

Man, I think going that close to max for us mere mortals is asking for trouble. That workout would wipe me out for 3-4 days before I could run anything again and probably a week before I could even think about anything faster than an easy pace. It may be a relevant strategy for elites, but that much time on your feet at that close to max effort for the distance seems like it would really inhibit recovery and any other potential gains you might make in the rest of the cycle. Plus there's that whole muscle damage thing.

He's basically saying Mosop ran just about a full marathon AS A TRAINING RUN at only a few minutes slower than his PR. Completely insane. First of all, Mosop could pick up a decent amount of money at any non-major race gliding through in 2:10 so why not take the payday if he's doing a "workout" that fast? Why not get paid $10k or so if you are going to run workouts that fast? But more to the point, why so hard and so long? That just seems like an insanely hard workout when top marathoners can only do 2 a year for a reason. "A marathon under 2:10 in training".....that's the craziest thing I've ever seen.



If you ran a workout that was pretty much a full marathon and did it only 2-3 minutes slower than your goal time, wouldn't your first thought be "damn, I should have been out there racing today!"

Its hard to evaluate one specific training run without the context of the whole training program. That's especially true of Canova.

That being said, I don't think this is a completely insane training run. I assume it essentially replaces the idea of a half-marathon tune up race. I wouldn't schedule it for myself or Chris or Jim, but if you didn't do a hard workout for the 6 days before and 6 days after, I think its manageable.

Also, Hudson includes a run like this: 18 miles at goal pace + 10 seconds. For mere mortals, that's much more manageable and would induce roughly the same benefit. Again though, it has to be prefaced with a lot of easy days.

So I did exactly this type of run on Saturday by pacing a friend to a 3:04 marathon. 14 minutes off my goal 8 weeks from my race.

Actually we were on 3:00 pace until mile 21-22 before my buddy needed to slow down.

Now three days later my quads are somewhat sore still (after all it was St. George) but I've run 3 miles yesterday and 6 miles today. Both days easy at about 8 min pace.

We'll see how fast I can recover and if this type of training run pays off. I think it will as I already got a huge mental boost by being able to handle 3 hr pace for a long run in 65-80 degree weather. If I can hold back and recover well this week I should see a big fitness boost.

More to come.

Sounds interesting!

I know I saw a big fitness jump without seeming to even try harder after I ran my first marathon. Everything just got easier and that would probably be the equivalent, more or less, to a really long really hard (for me) run. I don't know how willing I am to risk an injury by doing too much of that in training, though.

Ben Z wrote:So I did exactly this type of run on Saturday by pacing a friend to a 3:04 marathon. 14 minutes off my goal 8 weeks from my race.

I'd think that the fact that you were 14 minutes off your goal time and you're 8 weeks out makes this a very hard, but probably very productive training run ("race").
I think it would be impossible for me to do this and recover quickly enough to resume a training schedule right in the middle of peak mileage weeks.
A slight hijack...this discussion mentioned running mid-cycle half-marathons as legitimate hard marathon training runs. My question regarding these HM's is how hard to race them. I ran a HM this past weekend (8 weeks out) and ran it as a marathon pace run. It wasn't very stressful, and required very little recovery. Does this qualify as that hard type of workout that will produce the intended benefits, or was it too slow to make that much of a difference?

This of course is in the context of elites. Those guys are very young and bodies recover faster. I'd be playing with disaster at my age. I'm still getting mid 70% age grades and peaking my training just shy of 50 mi weeks. Stick with the 18 miles with some near MP goal pace thrown in.

Yeah, not for old kid, just can't recover, though I am not as old as the 2 above.

Seth Harrison wrote:

Ben Z wrote:So I did exactly this type of run on Saturday by pacing a friend to a 3:04 marathon. 14 minutes off my goal 8 weeks from my race.

I'd think that the fact that you were 14 minutes off your goal time and you're 8 weeks out makes this a very hard, but probably very productive training run ("race").
I think it would be impossible for me to do this and recover quickly enough to resume a training schedule right in the middle of peak mileage weeks.
A slight hijack...this discussion mentioned running mid-cycle half-marathons as legitimate hard marathon training runs. My question regarding these HM's is how hard to race them. I ran a HM this past weekend (8 weeks out) and ran it as a marathon pace run. It wasn't very stressful, and required very little recovery. Does this qualify as that hard type of workout that will produce the intended benefits, or was it too slow to make that much of a difference?

Four days later and legs are feeling better. 6 miles in the 7:30-7:45 range tonight + 6 30s strides. I plan to only run easy/moderate for a full two weeks before working back down to LT and marathon pace.

Seth - I think you had a great workout. 13 miles at MP anytime in training is great. The most I could probably do during a normal week would be 13-16 and that would really stress me. So great job.

Save the HM at faster than MP pace for the last 3-5 weeks.