the ironman long run

As we approach the Lake Placid Ironman I get questions from athletes about how long should my longest run be for the Ironman?When I hear someone is doing three hour long runs, it usually means one of a few things:

1. They are trying to cram their training in..... maybe rather than putting in a good 6-8 months of solid consistent training, they "got serious" 4 months out. They are nervous. But the Ironman..... he weeds these kids out. He knows who has done the work and who has not.

2. They have not been able to be consistent within their plan (their plan might call for it but they dont' execute it....) so they feel that by doing the mega run, that it will best prepare them for the marathon.


Now a lot of this is my opinion which I have formed through my experience coaching Ironman athletes (over 50 people, which is not as many as the coaches I look up to have certainly!), the reading I have done by people I consider to be the experts in our sport and through the coaches I have worked under (three of them).


I am going to extrapolate some points from an article by Coach Patrick, the other half of Rich Straus and Endurance Nation. I love the way these guys approach training. I use these guys a lot as references because they just simply have a way of saying what I want to say, but they strip it down and get right to the point.


In the Ironman I believe that running over 2:30.... even 2:15 is a risk not worth taking. I believe if you are following the standard 6 hour ride / 3 hour run you are doing nothing more than exhausting yourself, putting yourself at risk and just plain not confident in the training you have put in over the past 6-9 months. Remember that it is the cumulative work you have done throughout the past YEAR that makes this Ironman. NOT the number of long bikes and long runs you have done.


Longer is not better.


In my opinion..... longer is stoopid. I have changed my thinking over the years but I hope that shows that I am learning more and more each year that I do this.

Using the words of Coach Patrick I have added in some of my own thoughts on why running 3 hour long runs to prepare for an Ironman is not effective:

1: This is from my opinion: you train for an Ironman very differently than how you train for a marathon. To run a marathon, you strictly run, to complete an Ironman you swim bike and run. A 3 hour run might exist in a marathon plan. But in a marathon plan you are not biking 5 + hours as a long ride or per week. You are not swimming, you are running. Therefore you are not going to train the Ironman marathon as you would a straight up marathon. An Ironman isn't putting together long distance swim training + century ride training + marathon training. Ironman

2. This is from Coach Patrick and this article:

Overall IM Fitness is Built Across all Three Disciplines.True IM fitness isn't about one run (or ride or swim), it's about connecting all three via a plan that allows you to training effectively and consistently. Sure, we build up to some pretty significant distance benchmarks, but the fitness here is all about the "journey" -- not the "destination." Focus too much on a single discipline and you not only run the risk of injury, but you will also be taking time and energy away from something else.

Try thinking of a basic week of fitness instead of any one workout or discipline (. At Endurance Nation we think in a "weekly view" as all of our workouts are connected. And not a week as in Monday -- Sunday (or however you look at it), but as a rolling seven-day window. For example, looking at this Thursday's long run, we consider have you done over the last seven days to get here. There is not magical "reset" that happens every Monday. Run too hard or too long on Thursday and you'll mess up your weekend of riding; or worse yet, you'll fake it through the weekend but blow up somewhere else down the line

My input: Agree 100% on this one. I can't tell you how many stories I hear about athletes getting in their six hour rides, their three hour runs, then being injured / sick / exhausted and then being off the bike for 2 weeks. Believe me that the 1.5 weeks you are off the bike will hinder your performance more than that 3 hour run will help your performance. Over the course of the winter the athletes on the Train-This Team, Ironman or not complete a very balanced basic week. We may cycle through big bike or big run weeks but every single workout is designed to build off the previous. The consistency of the training means much more than the length of a long ride or run. In fact if I had it my way we would ride nothing over 5 hours.

3. IM Run Fitness has nothing to do with your longest run.This is a hold over from open marathon training, where folks are training to run hard for the whole event; in this case it makes sense to build that solid pace up to a long run of 20-21 miles. In an IM, however, we are training to not slow down on the run.

Let me repeat that: Marathon training = go fast on run; IM training = don't slow down.

Instead of being a marathon runner aiming for a pace (8:00 per mile, who cares about HR zones!), you are a triathlete who aims for an HR, not a pace. Race day is a great equalizer; most people end up running an IM at their easy long run pace (roughly 20 beats below LTHR). So instead of looking at a magical distance marker, we look at time. In the case of an IM training cycle. the peak run that a person can do during the typical race preparation week is 2.5 hours in Zone Two. Anything longer (or harder) starts to become a problem regarding recovery and overall running health. Can you run 24 miles in training for an IM? Yes. But when you are out there on the course, no one is saying, "Sure am glad I did that 24-mile run @ week 18, it's really helping me now!!!"

3. IM Run Fitness is about Frequency, Durability, and Consistency

If you have grasped the concept that your total aerobic engine, developed across three disciplines, is what drives your run, we have almost converted you. While the longest run peaks out at 2.5 hours, that doesn't mean you aren't running a lot; in your biggest run weeks, you'll do 5+ hours of running -- that's a lot, especially when you add it on top of swim and bike time. With the EN model of Iron-distance training, we work first to build durability by increasing run volume deliberately. Then we add "speed" in the form of strides and fartlek work. Once this is accomplished, we back off the intensity and start to increase the distance. When we move to the race preparation phase, "tempo" workouts move from being closer to 10k Pace and instead move to Half Marathon Pace

My input: Again, I can't agree more. Now Coach Patrick and Coach Rich build their programs a very specific way, I suppose mine might be similar or different. What I aim to do is match the program to the ability of the athlete, their schedule, etc. Not to say that these guys don't.

But I think we all have the same goal in mind. The goal: to build a very durable athlete.

Running 3 hour long runs is not building a durable age group Ironman Athlete.

The next time you hear your neighbor whose doing the Ironman brag about their 7 hour rides and 3 hour runs....... pray for them. Because their day will be a lot harder than they want to admit.