The Long Run Revisited......

#374 - The long run is the most important run in your running week. It can also sometimes cause you the most trouble. This week, I revisit the long run (I previously recorded an episode on the long run) with updates and give a more personal example with my very current long run problems. If you're having problems being motivated to finish those long miles, then this episode is for you! We can do this together! 

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(Cont.) The Long Run Revisited......

(Cont.) The Long Run Revisited......

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Do you enjoy stories of interesting places and fascinating history? Hidden West on YouTube is about the past, present, and future that make Western America such a unique place. Every week, a new video will bring you insightful and inspiring stories showing why there is no place in the world like the West. Welcome to Martha Runs the World, a podcast with a new take on running, fitness, and all things health oriented. I'm Martha Hughes, your host, and each week I present a new topic that is of interest to all runners. Hi and welcome to episode 374 of Martha Runs the World. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it each and every week. I have a confession to make. Ever since my last DNF last year at Cool Moon, I haven't run long at all. I took a few months off of serious running during the rest of summer and fall last year. I needed to clear my head and figure out what was going on, and since then I just haven't had any runs longer than six miles. I still run. I mean I still ran then, I'm running now, as regularly as I could, but my runs were short. Usually they were maybe four miles, sometimes five. I really enjoyed the break from races though. I needed the break from races. Unlike many runners, I'm not a huge fan of races. I know that sounds weird to some people. It's like, what? You don't like racing? What's the point of running? Well, races stress me out big time. I actually dread them sometimes. I can't sleep for days thinking about my races. It's it's a weird thing. I know a lot of people love them, they do them every week. I don't think I could do a race every week just because they are just emotionally draining on me. I like the social aspect. Sure, I like running into my friends or people that I've talked to before, and that's really fun. But I like everything but the race itself. The pressure I put on myself for races and understanding that I'll probably never be as ready for a race that I wish I was puts my stomach in knots. It just makes me feel ick. I see other runners having a great time at races, and even if I think that I'm doing okay, later on in the race, I'll think to myself, no, I'm not doing okay. I'm lying, I'm struggling, I'm really having a hard time. And this happens almost every race I do. And I really struggle at Cool Moon. I was so out of my league, I was so undertrained, I was not ready at all. And people say this is a tough race. I don't know what I'm thinking. I think, oh, but I can do this, I can handle it. But then as I get closer to the race and closer and then to the race itself, I think, no, I can't handle this. So I don't know. I mean, so I decided just to stop all races except for the turkey trout that I do every year on Thanksgiving. I did that one. But that was the only race I did after my DNF. And I actually ran for the love of running. I ran because I enjoy running. And it took me a while to settle into it and to enjoy my short runs. It it took me a long time to get back into liking three and four and five mile runs, but I really, really enjoyed them and I had a great time. I mean, how many times do we just go run because we love it, not because we have a race we're training for? It doesn't happen often enough for me. I don't think it's really happened that much unless I had an injury or surgery. That was actually the only time I stopped running when I wasn't training for a race. Every other time I was training for a race. It was just like this hamster wheel I couldn't get off of. And I felt like the last few months of not training for a race really did me a lot of good. I really, really liked it. I needed it, let's just say. I needed to understand why I loved running, and I did. I totally understand why I like running. I really enjoy it. And that was a good thing. However, now I'm ready to get back into longer runs. And I find myself in a tough spot. I have a race I'm training for for next October. I decided I'm not going to do my self-supported 50K. I am not trained for it. Again, I would be out there thinking, why can't I think I do this? I'm not trained, and I wouldn't be trained. I'm not ready. And I'll tell you a few things about why I'm not ready for it. I'm really having a hard time getting back into my long runs. Each time I need to go farther in a run, I cut it short. I'm too tired, the weather sucks, I can't do this today. All those excuses and more go through my head, and I usually pick one, and then that's the end of it. This past Saturday I gave myself a window to run eight to ten miles, and by mile seven I was done. I was exhausted. Maybe my head wasn't in the right place. Maybe I expected too much. Maybe I ran too fast. Maybe all of the above. Maybe none of those and something else. I don't know. I suspect that perhaps it was everything. I used every excuse in the book to stop my run short, and I kept thinking of things and and reasons why it could stop. I finally found one that was acceptable and I stopped. I mean seven miles is okay, but it's not really what I wanted or needed at that point. It didn't make me feel good either. I was very disappointed in myself. I spent a couple days thinking back, going, I could have done better. And of course I could have. So I thought this would be the perfect time to have a second look at the long run and how we can all learn to appreciate and rock our long runs better. And that includes me. The long run is the most important run we'll do all week. Why is this so important? Well, there's a bunch of reasons why. Now just to let you know, I did an episode on the long run years ago, so this is kind of a revisited one, adding a few extra things in, personal story that I already told, so that's why it's a little different. But why is the long run so important? There are many biological reasons why the long run is so important to our running success. First, the long runs train our bodies to be proficient at fat burning, and this helps us a lot in our regular lives when we're not running, when we're sleeping. All of our long runs can really go to help regulate our body. It's such an important thing. Muscle and liver glycogens are the major form of stored carbohydrates. Long runs help them to become better utilized by the body. Again, this is a thing that will be set up in the long run but will help you all the way through your whole day, including sleeping. The number of muscle capillaries and mitochondria, the blood vessels and cellular factories that create aerobic energy increase. And again, this is just vital for our running. This will help us with our interval running, this will help us with our sprints, this will help us with our short distance, our long distance, and not running. Our VO2 max increases, and this helps every part of our running. Our physical strength increases and prevents injuries. It allows for longer, more efficient movement in and outside of running. Wow. If you just think about that for a minute, you think about if your strength increases, and on those long runs you're able to push yourself more without the stress of a sprint, think of how much stronger you will be afterwards physically. Everything about the long run, as long as as you follow certain common sense rules, is positive. It's a really good thing, and that's why it's so important. I mean, you can run and train without sprinting. You can run and train without intervals. I don't think you can run and train for a race without a long run, unless it's a sprint race or something. Then you need sprints and you don't need the long run. But you know what I'm talking about. And then there is the mental fortitude it gives us. If I had the long run already, if I had been doing the long run for a while, I would have the mental fortitude to make myself keep going and not stop. But that's out of practice, so I really need that strength. This is a life skill that we all need. Long run builds mental toughness. It's not going to make us impermeable, it's not going to make us Chuck Norris, of course. But maybe those slings and arrows that we get every day won't hurt quite so much. Maybe we can handle things a little bit better if we can handle a long run. The long run is also extremely important to prepare the logistics for your race day. A lot goes into it. First, let's go over hydration and nutrition needs. This is really important. On your long run is the best place to test all your hydration and nutrition needs. What works, what doesn't work. And you may think you know what works for you in a long run. Well, go ahead and try it out in that long run and see if your nutrition works okay. And if it does, that's great. Just keep using it because your body may react differently on different days. Mine does anyway. Maybe mine's weird, I I don't know. But what may work on a hot day may not work on a cold day. You have to train for both. For example, I love noon. I like the bubbly and I like the not bubbly. The bubbly is awesome in hot weather. It's something about those bubbles that keeps my stomach settle. I have a very sensitive stomach. I can't eat just anything during when I'm running. I have to be very careful about what I eat. Or else I'm going to be going from port-a-potty to port a potty. Seriously, it's bad. Not all hydration mixes work for me. As a matter of fact, few work for me. And Noon is one of them that does. I remember being in a race and I was in the at the eighth station at Tennessee Valley and I just hit the wall really bad. The kind of wall that would you would drop out of a road race for. The kind of wall that you hit maybe three times in an in an ultra race, right? So I hit the wall and I wasn't hungry at all, but I knew I had to eat something. So I had my noon tablet. So I put the noon tablet in the water, bubbly stuff, and I ate some pretzels. And I'll tell you that pretzels and bubbly noon really, really helped so much. Just got my stomach back. And yeah, my stomach was upset. What a surprise. I climbed over the wall and got past the wall, and I was able to keep going. And that was just a godsend. So now when it's warm, I like to bring um the peanut butter filled pretzels. Those really work well in the heat. It gives you a little bit of fat and protein with it. And that that works for me. But you have to figure out what's going to work for you. Warm weather, is your stomach gonna react the same as it is in cold weather? If you are one of those people that has an iron stomach and could eat anything, well, I guess you don't really have to train, do you? I do not. I don't have that. I have a very, very sensitive stomach, as I was saying, and I have to be very careful of what I eat. And it really depends on the weather, too. It's so strange. What you eat the day before and the morning of your long run is important as well. If you're like me and have a sensitive stomach, you have to be careful about what you eat the day before a long run. I have to be careful and not eat too much dairy. I can have a little bit, but not a lot. So no pizza for me the night before a long run. Afterwards, sure, I'll go for it, but not before. Spicy food the day before, oh, you may want to skip that and have that after your run. It really depends on how your body handles it. Okay, and also bring with you a waste pack or a vest or something where you can carry your water and all your goodies because you don't want to be out on your long run and not have access to water. I've seen it before. People go out of their house with just their ID and maybe their phone, and that's it. They're not prepared for anything and they want to do a long run. Well, you don't have anything with you. How are you gonna do that? You're gonna run from water fountain to water fountain? It's not a great plan, especially if you need water in between those places. And you also need to give yourself energy. I guess you could stop into a liquor store or a Walgreens or something and grab something to eat, but it's always a better idea to have it with you, especially if you're on a road run or if you're out in the woods or on a trail, too. You won't have access to anything except what you bring. So just be prepared. Gear and clothing. Test your new stuff on the long run. Did you just buy a new running vest? Better try it out a few times before you wear it in a race. You need to find out how everything works. It seems that every brand has a different way of fastening their vests, so figure out how that works and see if that's something that you can handle in a race. If not, you might want to take it back and get another one. It just depends on what you like in your equipment. You really have to figure out where all the pockets are, easiest places for accessibility during a race. Do you have to take the entire vest off to find something? It's really, really a pain. And you also want to ask yourself: do I want bottles or a hydration bladder? Hydration bladders are nice for training, but do you want a hydration bladder for a race? Because you're gonna have to take the vest all the way off and you're gonna have to unzip things and you're gonna have to unfasten things. It can take a long time. So I'm not sure if you really want a bladder for a race because it's just so time consuming. If you can do it quickly, that's awesome. I have a vest with a bladder on it, and I only use that when I go really far into a trail and I know there's no water accessibility and I can't filter from a stream, then I'll use that vest. But other than that, I use my regular um Solomon vest because I like the pockets. I like that I can take two bottles of water, I like that everything is there and I don't have to worry about it. And they have big pockets on that vest. Very big pockets. The only problem, of course, with that vest is that to get to the water, I have to unfasten the front and then I take the bottle out. But it's that's like a couple second delay. It's not a big deal. I've gotten used to it now, I can do it pretty quickly. But you have to figure out if that's the kind of vest that you want. And the same goes for other gear and clothing. If you buy a top you want to wear during a race, wear it first during training and see if that's really what you want. I actually bought one of those long-sleeve uh UV ray protection shirts with a hood to wear in hot weather. And I tried it once in hot weather and I hated it. It was so hot. And they always say, Oh no, it you won't feel hot. You'll stay cool, it'll keep you cool. Didn't keep me cool at all. I was very, very warm. I was sweating profusely with it. And I said, No, I'll deal with the sun's rays, I'll put on sunscreen. And I just can't deal with that kind of shirt anymore. It's too warm. I think that shirt would be great if you're up in the mountains and it's a little cooler and you're going through maybe a little snow or something. I think that would be great because it was very warm. And it wasn't like a war a cold weather shirt. It was made to wear in the sun where it's hot to protect drums from UV rays. And it's like, nope, I'm gonna take my chances. And maybe that's not good. And that's not a good safety thing, but oh, I was so uncomfortable wearing really, really bad. So that's the things you find out in a training run that you're not gonna find out in a race. Once you get out on a race, you're out of the course, you say, Why did I wear this shirt? It's terrible, or this little part of me. Chase, why am I doing this? I have to put up with this for 10 more miles. So you have to think, is that something you want to put up with for 10 miles, for 20, for 30? Maybe not. And that goes for shorts and leggings and socks. And also, too, you want to figure out if that's a headlamp you want. If you bought a new headlamp and you want to wear it, figure out how to use it. Use the switches, the buttons at the top, because most headlamps have what, four or five different things. And it's hard to get to the one that you want. All I want is a headlamp with a good light coming out. I don't want all these other colors, I don't want all this other stuff. I just want a headlamp, and you have to figure out how to do that quickly. And then also please prepare your headlamps and everything with batteries. And that's another thing for your long run. If you have an old phone that runs out of power soon, you might want to take an extra battery source with you, uh battery charger with you. That's maybe not a big, giant, heavy one, maybe a smaller one that you'll be able to charge your um your phone. And maybe if you need to charge your watch because your watch can't handle long distances, you may need that as well. So it's always good to keep that in mind and to practice with that during your training to see how much time that's gonna take up. If you can run with it, if you can walk with it, or you have to sit and do it taking time out, then it might not be worth it. Then you have to figure out something else. I remember one time I started a race without checking the batteries in my headlamp, but I knew I was gonna be out there at night, and I forgot to bring extra batteries. I didn't put the batteries in my headlamp and I didn't bring extra ones. I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking, okay, that's right. I wasn't thinking. Thank goodness there was a friend of mine on the course and he had an extra headlamp, and he let me use his headlamp, and that was really, really, really nice because I would have had to drop out of the race had I not had that headlamp because it got very dark out there. It was on a trail, it was out in the middle of nowhere, and I don't know what I would have done in the dark. I won't make that mistake again, trust me. That's one's done. No more of headlamp mistakes like that. Now, the one thing that always has confused me, should I run for time or distance? The running coaches all say you should run for time, but if you're trying to fit a certain number of miles in, shouldn't you be running for distance? Because of my confusion and because I've always run for distance, I'm gonna try in my long runs to run for time and see if it works better. I don't know if it will. I don't know if during the run I'll say to heck with this, I'm gonna run for distance. I have no idea. I'm just gonna use it as an experiment and see how it goes, and I'll let you know how it goes in a future episode. I just um I need to try something new, I need to try something that these coaches say works really well, so okay, I'll do that then. Now the wisdom has always been don't increase more than 10% per week. You can probably ease it up to 25%, but I wouldn't do more than that. And if you're starting to get into the long run or getting back into them like me, it's a good idea to do a long run in alternating weeks. This is also a good idea if you're older, because uh we don't uh recover as quickly, unfortunately. Give yourself lots of time. I know we don't always have the time, but if it looks like you won't be able to, you can always move your long run to a different day. You might have to do it maybe six days, a week and a half apart, or something like that, just to fit it in. But try to always do your long run. You can skip other runs, you can skip your your sprints, you can skip your fartlicks, you can skip all that. Just don't skip your long run if at all possible. Now, if it looks like you're not going to be prepared for your race, there's no shame in deferring it till next year if they allow you to do that. I mean, if they don't, you might have to eat the cost. But I don't think I'm ever going to run another race where I'm totally unprepared. I've done that a couple times now, and I just don't want to do that anymore. I want to feel like I'm prepared. I want to go to the race and say, yeah, I'm ready to go. I don't want to be completely unprepared. Being the walking dead in a race isn't as glamorous as it sounds. And trust me on that, I've done that way too many times. One of the icky things I'm finding out about aging, which I mentioned quickly in the last bit, is that my body does not recover as fast as it used to. It takes a little longer. That's why I'm alternating every other week. I find myself not being able to go as long as I want. As many times as I want. So I really have to ease into it a little bit more. I have to give myself a little bit more grace. I'm sorry, I have a frog in my throat right now. I think it's allergies. Spring just started and it's kicking my butt, let me tell you. Here's something really important. Ask yourself before you start to run, and then ask yourself during your run. What do I want to accomplish with this run? And it really depends on what you want to do. Think of what you want to do during the run. And don't give yourself too many to-dos. This is not a long, you know, 10-point list, just a couple things. I want to go longer and I want to try to keep running slower. Those are two really, really good goals. So keep those two goals and keep those in mind during your run so you don't forget. It's really easy to forget because we're out there and we're thinking of the running and keeping running. And should we keep running or should we go faster and doing all this stuff? And if you keep those two goals in your mind, then you'll be able to accomplish a goal better, I believe. And I'm going to have a little chat with me on my runs about my goals. Because we're I'm not I'm tired of cutting my long run short, and I don't want to do it anymore, so I don't think I will. Run slower than you should. Running too fast is really easy, and I think that's one of the problems with my runs is that I'm going too fast. Running slower forces us to keep running longer. If you think you're running too slow, it's probably the right pace. Don't worry what anyone else is thinking around you, who cares. You do what you have to do. It's your run, your pace, so go a little slower. And don't be afraid to walk if you need to. There's nothing wrong with walking in a race. When I was a young runner, I hated walking at all during a race. I thought it was wrong. Now that I'm older, I find walking a bit helps me center myself, gets everything together, and gets me back into things, and then I go back to running. Also, I need to walk when I uh drink fluids or eat. I can't do either of those when I'm running. I just can't. My body won't handle it. As I said before, sensitive stomach and all. Pick an enjoyable place to run. Maybe most of us just get outdoors and run the same place all the time. If you're going to invest hours into your long run, why not make it into a place that that's at least beautiful? I mean, at least you should be out enjoying some part of nature or something. And also, if you're training for a race, train for that race. If you're doing a hilly race, train on hills. If you're doing a flat race, train on flats. If you're doing mountain race, I'm not sure if you can train on a mountain, but try to do something similar. If you live in a flat area, train on highway overpasses or empty parking garages or on stairs. Do something to give you some kind of feeling that you're doing the right training for the right race. I've underestimated nasty hills before and trail races. And one of those things is I have to train more on hills. So there you go. The race I'm doing in October is fairly flat, so I don't have to worry about that. It's distance that I have to worry about. And I'm going to be working on that all year up to October. And I'll tell you how it goes as I keep going along. And I will give you little side progress reports about how my training is going. Because I really, really want to do better in the Ruth Anderson 50k this year. I really do. Alright, so that is it for today's show. And thank you very, very much for listening. I truly appreciate it. And my email is Martha Runsworld at gmail.com. And until next week, let's tie up our shoelaces and go for a run.