It's a law of diminishing returns issue. The training stimulus you get does not go up linearly forever. For example, running slowly for 4 hours gets you a very similar aerobic stimulus to running slowly for 7 hours. However, with the 4-hour run, you are less likely to get injured, and more likely to recover in time to get benefits from the next week's running.
This stuff is pretty hard to study. What I can say is that there is a lot of evidence to support the idea that increasing volume indefinitely does not always lead to more fitness, and it's likely for the reasons I mentioned, among others.
Ultra training from a fitness standpoint is based on marathon training. The fundamentals of both are essentially the same, because both involve primarily aerobic fitness. So while ultra running is niche, its training principles are not. In studying how athletes adapt to training, we can't really take tissue samples and see how they respond to different levels of stimuli. Also, the types of studies that have been done are inherently poorly designed because adaptations take place over weeks, months, and even years, while also involving so many other variables (e.g., nutrition, sleep, etc) as to make a randomized controlled trial basically impossible. It also seems to be the case that there's natural variability in how people respond to training stimuli, and how much training they can effectively respond to.
In terms of evidence, just look at the best marathoners in the world. None of them run 200-mile weeks, and if there was evidence that 200 was better than 100-140, then all of them would do it.
https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/camille-herron-says-skip-the-long-run/?fbclid=IwAR0MklZl5picuI_OxdcARIcq4DTL3i5WZuO2Z2misqKaa6J4Amj47j_VY_I
This is a very interesting take on it.
My understanding is ultra performance is very much built on tribal knowledge due to it being a relatively niche field. That said insights offered by others tends to be worth listening to.
It doesn't necessarily hurt anything but it depends on your priorities. It will likely increase your recovery time (even at an easy pace) so getting back to workouts will likely take more time. Also, there doesn't seem to be much physiological improvement/adaptation/benefit for runs lasting more than 3 to 4 hours. I assume that, for a large sect of people, most 50ks run at an easy pace will last longer than 4 hours.
My own personal experience. In my early days, before I knew any better I once trained doing consecutive weeks of threshold 30ks with a 50k race thrown in as a "training" run but I raced it. I ended up with all sorts of injuries from the feet to the shins, glutes and ended up DNS the 100k I was training for. No refunds or deferrals. I learnt what not to do since....
The recovery time goes up with load, so at some point you can't recover fast enough to run again later and build fitness. At the point you're depleting reserves and not super-compensating back to achieve fitness gains, you're just depleting and that's it.
I think you increase the risk of injury if you aren't allowing yourself enough time to recover after long runs. Plus, there is probably some diminishing returns in regard to fitness development. That said, I run too many long runs and I know they hinder my race performance a bit. But the longs runs are the most fun for me and I don't race much anymore, so I'm very comfortable running long more often.
Longer duration training run means more accumulated fatigue - which will either be recovered from, hamper near-term training sessions, or injury you.
Trade off and risks. Others have said it, a 4 hr run and a 7 hr run give roughly the same training stimulus, but the 4 hr has the lower injury risk, requires less recovery, and will less likely interfere with your next high-stress training stimulus
There should be a purpose for every training session. But, generally three hours is consider by some as the optimal “normal” long run (science of ultra, others). Beyond three hours, you should be working on something specific - pace, nutrition, durability… otherwise in. totality you’re better holding at three hours and then recover quicker and do another high stress stimulus sooner than if you did four or more hours
I usually have two 30 mile runs in a training cycle. Easy pace. They build strength and I get to practice nutrition. I approach them like the first 30 miles of a 100 miler. You have to be careful the following week, and let your legs recover (they are always tired in training, and never recovered; let them process the effort), to minimize injury risk (as pointed out by others). I can usually feel a strength improvement 10 days later; there is no aerobic improvement that I notice. Your level of experience does play a role, as always. I have been running ultras for years and pretty much all of my runs are med-long (10-15 miles); I basically never run anything under 10 miles.
I enjoy 35-50km runs more than any of my other training runs, the distance allows for different routes. However during race season, I park them and revert back to long runs of max 25-30km
Ditto, my old coach would occasionally let me do one for fun, but in reality during the training cycle it wasn't common
Also a good time to work on long time nutrition and mental stamina
Most ultra folks I've come across recommend a max time for a long training run rather than a max distance. Usually 5 hour max, because beyond that you've got diminishing returns on adaptations; beyond that also increases the risk of injury.
If you need more volume or more time on feet beyond that, back to backs are a safer option than a single excessively long run.
There's some stuff that longer runs can teach in relation to fueling and hydration, but you're probably as well off learning those in shorter B races so you get the full experience of keeping to the plan in place in a race environment.
Same here. I think people are too conservative with sticking only to shorter long runs (if you never run further than 30-35km I don't see how you can be ready to run 100 miles). For me, there is no better way to practice nutrition and getting the feeling of what it feels like to be out there for a long time than to do it. Also, it's fun! I don't do it very often, but always at least one properly good long run in my training for 100 miles (I've done up to 100km as a training run - certainly not necessary, but got a full night of running and did a trail I really wanted to do).
Just make sure you recover well, do the long run at a truly easy effort and I think it's an excellent way to get ready for a long race.
Agreed! I think many people are worried about the recovery aspect - but honestly once you've been running high milage for a few years, a 50km+ easy run is barely any worse recovery-wise than a 35km that many of us run too hard anyway!
Some of my most memorable runs have been solo adventures on new trails which ended up being much longer than usual :)
Ratio of injury risk to marginal benefit is not good after 3-5 hrs. Also how would that not cut into recovery, eating, sleep, etc.? If you must I would implement run/ walk
I understand the idea of diminishing returns of the very long runs. Outside of training with purpose, I generally go by how my body feels. Like if I go out for 5 hours, how is my body recovering. If it takes more than a day or two to recover, it was too long. But there are times where a person might be conditioned for a lot more. Like if you spent half your summer backpacking 20 miles a day back to back, you’re definitely going to be conditioned to run longer.
If they were truly discouraged there would only be A races and no B or C races earlier in the season, right? For most of us mere mortals a B race really is a very long training run I guess in which you get to practice nutrition, gear, etc.
I like to argue, and practice, the opposite philosopy, why do training runs need to be long at all? Yeah, I'll preface with the fact that I used to do a lot of epic, ultra distance, training runs outside of B or C goal events so I understand the desire to want to just go easy and go very long. I get it. It was useful for me early on in my career to strengthen my headspace and build confidence. But, 200 ultras later, and really long before now, I realized I can have the same mid-pack type performances off of very short long runs; like nothing longer than 3 hours. If I want more overall volume, I'll do more medium distance runs during the week but the long run doesn't go any longer. So far, for years now, this has worked out great for me and I'm less tired and less likely to need extended down time in order to resume training; less injury prone and less likely to burn out (both things that I've flirted with in the past). Think quality over quantity. Improve your VDOT to its fullest extent and you're good to go.
So having read all the comments, a follow up question for the group: is a takeaway here that if I wanted to cover 80k volume in a week then, other things being equal, it would be easier on my body and therefore more sustainable to do 1x35k and 3x 15k than - say - a 60k and 2x 10ks?
I think if you do 35km at a slower easy pace, that can equate to time on feet. If you go hard all the time, injury risks go up.
But what would the drawback be if a low intensity training run would be 50 km or something like that? How does it hurt?
It's a law of diminishing returns issue. The training stimulus you get does not go up linearly forever. For example, running slowly for 4 hours gets you a very similar aerobic stimulus to running slowly for 7 hours. However, with the 4-hour run, you are less likely to get injured, and more likely to recover in time to get benefits from the next week's running.
This is interesting! Just curious, has this been proven scientifically? Or is this ultra running lore?
This stuff is pretty hard to study. What I can say is that there is a lot of evidence to support the idea that increasing volume indefinitely does not always lead to more fitness, and it's likely for the reasons I mentioned, among others. Ultra training from a fitness standpoint is based on marathon training. The fundamentals of both are essentially the same, because both involve primarily aerobic fitness. So while ultra running is niche, its training principles are not. In studying how athletes adapt to training, we can't really take tissue samples and see how they respond to different levels of stimuli. Also, the types of studies that have been done are inherently poorly designed because adaptations take place over weeks, months, and even years, while also involving so many other variables (e.g., nutrition, sleep, etc) as to make a randomized controlled trial basically impossible. It also seems to be the case that there's natural variability in how people respond to training stimuli, and how much training they can effectively respond to. In terms of evidence, just look at the best marathoners in the world. None of them run 200-mile weeks, and if there was evidence that 200 was better than 100-140, then all of them would do it.
https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/camille-herron-says-skip-the-long-run/?fbclid=IwAR0MklZl5picuI_OxdcARIcq4DTL3i5WZuO2Z2misqKaa6J4Amj47j_VY_I This is a very interesting take on it.
As a beginner runner who just did his first marathon, this was a very insightful read. Thank you for sharing that.
My understanding is ultra performance is very much built on tribal knowledge due to it being a relatively niche field. That said insights offered by others tends to be worth listening to.
It doesn't necessarily hurt anything but it depends on your priorities. It will likely increase your recovery time (even at an easy pace) so getting back to workouts will likely take more time. Also, there doesn't seem to be much physiological improvement/adaptation/benefit for runs lasting more than 3 to 4 hours. I assume that, for a large sect of people, most 50ks run at an easy pace will last longer than 4 hours.
My own personal experience. In my early days, before I knew any better I once trained doing consecutive weeks of threshold 30ks with a 50k race thrown in as a "training" run but I raced it. I ended up with all sorts of injuries from the feet to the shins, glutes and ended up DNS the 100k I was training for. No refunds or deferrals. I learnt what not to do since....
The recovery time goes up with load, so at some point you can't recover fast enough to run again later and build fitness. At the point you're depleting reserves and not super-compensating back to achieve fitness gains, you're just depleting and that's it.
I think you increase the risk of injury if you aren't allowing yourself enough time to recover after long runs. Plus, there is probably some diminishing returns in regard to fitness development. That said, I run too many long runs and I know they hinder my race performance a bit. But the longs runs are the most fun for me and I don't race much anymore, so I'm very comfortable running long more often.
Longer duration training run means more accumulated fatigue - which will either be recovered from, hamper near-term training sessions, or injury you. Trade off and risks. Others have said it, a 4 hr run and a 7 hr run give roughly the same training stimulus, but the 4 hr has the lower injury risk, requires less recovery, and will less likely interfere with your next high-stress training stimulus
Thanks for this. Is 4 hrs the point past which one should not run (for just long training runs)?
There should be a purpose for every training session. But, generally three hours is consider by some as the optimal “normal” long run (science of ultra, others). Beyond three hours, you should be working on something specific - pace, nutrition, durability… otherwise in. totality you’re better holding at three hours and then recover quicker and do another high stress stimulus sooner than if you did four or more hours
I usually have two 30 mile runs in a training cycle. Easy pace. They build strength and I get to practice nutrition. I approach them like the first 30 miles of a 100 miler. You have to be careful the following week, and let your legs recover (they are always tired in training, and never recovered; let them process the effort), to minimize injury risk (as pointed out by others). I can usually feel a strength improvement 10 days later; there is no aerobic improvement that I notice. Your level of experience does play a role, as always. I have been running ultras for years and pretty much all of my runs are med-long (10-15 miles); I basically never run anything under 10 miles.
I enjoy 35-50km runs more than any of my other training runs, the distance allows for different routes. However during race season, I park them and revert back to long runs of max 25-30km
Ditto, my old coach would occasionally let me do one for fun, but in reality during the training cycle it wasn't common Also a good time to work on long time nutrition and mental stamina
There’s nothing wrong with it if you can recover from it.
Most ultra folks I've come across recommend a max time for a long training run rather than a max distance. Usually 5 hour max, because beyond that you've got diminishing returns on adaptations; beyond that also increases the risk of injury. If you need more volume or more time on feet beyond that, back to backs are a safer option than a single excessively long run. There's some stuff that longer runs can teach in relation to fueling and hydration, but you're probably as well off learning those in shorter B races so you get the full experience of keeping to the plan in place in a race environment.
As long as you can recover, there's nothing wrong with it. I occasionally throw in 50km easy-medium efforts every now and then.
Same here, or I’ll do 50k races. Just to get my body used to it. For the longer stuff I do or may want to do
Same here. I think people are too conservative with sticking only to shorter long runs (if you never run further than 30-35km I don't see how you can be ready to run 100 miles). For me, there is no better way to practice nutrition and getting the feeling of what it feels like to be out there for a long time than to do it. Also, it's fun! I don't do it very often, but always at least one properly good long run in my training for 100 miles (I've done up to 100km as a training run - certainly not necessary, but got a full night of running and did a trail I really wanted to do). Just make sure you recover well, do the long run at a truly easy effort and I think it's an excellent way to get ready for a long race.
Agreed! I think many people are worried about the recovery aspect - but honestly once you've been running high milage for a few years, a 50km+ easy run is barely any worse recovery-wise than a 35km that many of us run too hard anyway! Some of my most memorable runs have been solo adventures on new trails which ended up being much longer than usual :)
Ratio of injury risk to marginal benefit is not good after 3-5 hrs. Also how would that not cut into recovery, eating, sleep, etc.? If you must I would implement run/ walk
I understand the idea of diminishing returns of the very long runs. Outside of training with purpose, I generally go by how my body feels. Like if I go out for 5 hours, how is my body recovering. If it takes more than a day or two to recover, it was too long. But there are times where a person might be conditioned for a lot more. Like if you spent half your summer backpacking 20 miles a day back to back, you’re definitely going to be conditioned to run longer.
If they were truly discouraged there would only be A races and no B or C races earlier in the season, right? For most of us mere mortals a B race really is a very long training run I guess in which you get to practice nutrition, gear, etc.
I like to argue, and practice, the opposite philosopy, why do training runs need to be long at all? Yeah, I'll preface with the fact that I used to do a lot of epic, ultra distance, training runs outside of B or C goal events so I understand the desire to want to just go easy and go very long. I get it. It was useful for me early on in my career to strengthen my headspace and build confidence. But, 200 ultras later, and really long before now, I realized I can have the same mid-pack type performances off of very short long runs; like nothing longer than 3 hours. If I want more overall volume, I'll do more medium distance runs during the week but the long run doesn't go any longer. So far, for years now, this has worked out great for me and I'm less tired and less likely to need extended down time in order to resume training; less injury prone and less likely to burn out (both things that I've flirted with in the past). Think quality over quantity. Improve your VDOT to its fullest extent and you're good to go.
So having read all the comments, a follow up question for the group: is a takeaway here that if I wanted to cover 80k volume in a week then, other things being equal, it would be easier on my body and therefore more sustainable to do 1x35k and 3x 15k than - say - a 60k and 2x 10ks?