How should you feel at the end of a long run?

It’s easy to overdo every aspect of training by going too hard on a rest day or too fast on the first rep of your speed workout. The long run is a craft that shouldn’t be overdone, as it has a sweet spot in your training to improve aerobic endurance over a certain time or distance. If you are pouring all of your energy into your long runs, you are doing it wrong.

Long runs are a crucial piece of the training block in your preparation for your goal race.  They prepare your body to handle the physical demands of a race, building confidence and soothing your mind over that distance. Long runs are a fantastic way to measure your growth, as they remind us of the work that needs to be done before race day.

Depending on your training load, there are a few different ways to do your long run–you can treat it as a slow progression run, run long and slow, or run slowly with a fast finish. All these long-run approaches have different benefits depending on your purpose, but each should moderately have your body feeling the same way at the end.

The goal of your long run should be to cover the distance comfortably, hitting the training distances and getting to the start line or your training week healthy. Therefore, it’s important to feel comfortable yet fatigued at the end of a long run. The distance will be prolonged work, but that’s why it’s important to hit a slower pace through the first eight to 10K, which will accomplish more than going at a faster pace.

In the second edition of Jack Daniels Running Formula, he states, “The feeling you want to achieve on every long run is how you’d expect you’d feel in the latter stages of a half or full marathon.”

Long runs are meant to teach your body to physiologically prepare for the stresses it will experience on race day. Besides receiving a bib and chip time, there are very few things you do on race day that you have not yet practiced on a long run along the way.