The Importance of the Long Run
Specificity is the key to training, and the most important factor in running the marathon well is the weekly long run. Marathoning in the U.S. has declined badly in the last 20 years, and the biggest reason is the failure to do the long run. For example, in the 1970s and 1980s there were numerous American men in the 2:10 range or better, and all of them did long runs of 20 miles or more each week. By contrast, too many of today's American marathoners are convinced by well-meaning articles in running magazines that they can run a long run every two or three weeks, and that will be enough.

Take a look at the top marathoners of the world (e.g., Radcliffe, Khannouchi, Tergat, Takahashi, Drossin, etc.) and you will see a consistent pattern of weekend long runs. Often those runs are well in excess of 20 miles. For example, world record holder Paul Tergat ran the full marathon distance on a training run every other week prior to his record-setting race. Now look back at the American marathon champions of the last thirty years (Rodgers, Benoit, Shorter, Salazar) and you will see exactly the same pattern. Those people ran long runs regularly. Many times those runs would be as much as 25 to 30 miles, and their 20-mile runs were done at a brisk pace.

In 1994, when I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, I began working with a woman in her mid-thirties named Bonnie McReynolds. She had not run in college, and had very little natural speed, but she was strong and tough. I designed for her program a gradual buildup in mileage, with special emphasis on the long run. Her base long run became 20 miles, and she did that week after week, year-round, on a hilly course. Often she would complete the 20 miles with a buildup in the last four to six miles, something also done regularly by U.S. Olympic gold medalist Frank Shorter. Before her peak marathons, we then introduced increased distances every two or three weeks. They were "spikes" in the normal 20-mile routine. We increased the spikes from 22 miles, to 24 miles, to 26 miles, about a month before the target marathon. On that program she qualified for the 1996 U.S. Olympic Trials, where she eventually finished eleventh in 2:36, finishing just ahead of Joan Benoit Samuelson. That performance resulted in Bonnie being invited to participate on national teams.

This was not just a matter of one person having great talent. Several of the runners who trained on that program in our Nashville Racers running club ended up being ranked in the top 100 marathoners in the nation. They showed up every week to do the long run, and routinely ran 15 to 18 mile runs for their week's secondary distance run. It helps to have a group to make the long runs tolerable, but when that is not available, the true marathoner can tough it out alone. A classic example of the marathoner psyche at work was Christine Clark, who lived in Alaska, and could not stray far from her small children, so she did very long runs routinely on her treadmill. She won the 2000 U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon, beating many better-known runners, and ran in the Olympics. She has again qualified for the 2004 trials.

I learned this secret to marathoning when I was President of the Carolina Godiva Track Club in North Carolina in the 1970s. Our club produced a surprising number of top marathoners, and the primary reason was adherence to the principle of the weekly long run. Bill Hall was a masters division marathoner who ran 2:22 at Boston, a time that would place among the leading Open U.S. times at Boston today. Bill ran at least 20 miles every Sunday, with some runs being as long as 30 miles, and many of his runs were done at under 7 minutes per mile pace. Also running for our club were the Shea sisters, Julie and Mary, who both ran in the 2:30 range. Mary still ranks in the top 50 U.S. marathoners all- time. It was the Sheas' diligent training and consistent long runs that did it. One of their Carolina Godiva teammates was Ellison Goodall, a former Duke track star at 3000 meters, but not as strong in the long distances. I eventually persuaded Ellison to increase her weekly long run to 20 miles, and within two years she converted her newly-found endurance to a top-5 finish at Boston, and followed up with a second-place finish, behind Grete Waitz, at the World Cross-Country championships.

The long run habit was made prominent by the great New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard. His runners ran a 22-mile loop every week. I have been to New Zealand and gone over the loop. It starts in the western part of Auckland, at about sea level. Over about 5 miles it rises several thousand feet into the Waitakeri Mountains. The loop is up and down along the mountain ridges for about 13 to 14 miles, and then plunges back down (several thousand feet) into Auckland. Lydiard coached only runners from the western part of Auckland, then a city of less than 200,000 people. Barry Magee was the third best runner among his training partners. He could not match them on the track, so he ran the marathon. He medaled at the 1960 Rome Olympics and ran 2:17, in the hot Italian summer. That time would have made him the second best American finisher at the 2002 New York Marathon, and the United States is a nation with a population greater than 1,000 Aucklands. Oh, and Magee's two faster training partners, Snell and Halberg, both won gold medals.

Of course, the long run is not the only key to running fast marathons. The total weekly mileage needs to be considerable, and the interval training needs to be sufficient to run a respectable 10K. But the fact remains that the weekly long run is the backbone to every successful marathon program. Taking short cuts leads to short marathons, and those don't count in the standings.

Roland Rust provides free coaching to a handful of dedicated runners. His coaching resume can be found at Roland. He also compiles the Washington Running Report runner rankings. Roland can be contacted at rrust9@comcast.net