Carrying out one last long run within a few weeks of race day is one of the
crippling mistakes many marathoners make. MARATHON PROGRAMS

Sure, at first glance that close-to-race-day long run seems like a good idea. After
all, don’t you need to prove to yourself that you can go the distance on race day? What
better way is there to show you’ve got the right stuff than to reel off a 20-miler just a
couple of weeks before you go to the starting line? And – won’t such a run give one last
shot-in-the-arm to your endurance, almost ensuring a bonk-free race day?

That kind of thinking is perfectly logical, but it fails to take into account one key
piece of information: You need to recover after your long runs. After a 20-mile training
run, your leg muscles do not possess their normal function or structure. Propulsive force
production by your muscles is reduced (making it harder to sustain goal marathon pace),
and an electron-microscope exam of your muscle fibers would reveal large holes in your
muscular architecture – places where contractile elements are damaged or totally missing.
After a long run, your muscles don’t return to normal for a considerable period of time.
Scientific research suggests that this recovery period may last for four weeks or more!

As you can see, hitting a long run two to three weeks before your marathon
ensures that recovery will not be complete – and that you will toe the starting line with
rickety muscles. This is exactly what Dutch exercise scientists discovered several years
ago in a comprehensive examination of marathon runners. In the Dutch study, about two thirdsof all marathon runners had significant signs of muscle injury on the morning of
the race, before they had run just one mile of the marathon! The reason for this muscular
mayhem, for the most part, was the long running the Dutch had carried out during the
month before the race. The Dutch-athletes’ sinews were totally non-recovered on race
day. MARATHON PROGRAMS

Running the marathon with tattered muscles is not the way to set a PR, and it’s
not the way to have a good day on the race course. But how can you build the endurance
you need for the marathon (by carrying out long runs, including one last 20-miler) – and
still keep your leg muscles hale and hearty?

In their careful analysis, the Dutch researchers found that training runs with
durations longer than 15 kilometers (~ 9.3 miles) were the ones which seemed to produce
the greatest amount of muscle damage. Below 15K, little muscle damage accrued.

So, let’s assemble our data. We know that muscle recovery after a long run takes
four weeks. We also know that training runs of nine miles or less do not seem to produce
additional muscle damage in runners preparing for a marathon. Our logical conclusions
are that the last long run should take place at least four weeks before the marathon and
that no single run should exceed nine miles during the four-week “window” before the
race.

Won’t such a long gap between the last long run and the actual marathon decrease
endurance and make your body “forget” how to operate efficiently over a long distance
like the marathon? MARATHON PROGRAMS

Absolutely not! In fact, this long-run-free, four-week period represents a great
opportunity for you to boost your fitness. As you gradually emerge from the recovery
shadow of your last long run, you’ll be able to step up the intensity of your training
progressively, carrying out great, high-quality workouts which boost your vVO2max,
running economy, and lactate threshold speed, three key predictors of marathon capacity.
The marathon is like any endurance race, even the much-shorter 5K, in the sense that
your marathon performance hinges on your overall fitness and your specific
preparation. For both the 5K and marathon, your fitness is maximized by the highquality
things you do in training. In the 5K, your specific preparation is optimized by
conducting workouts at goal 5-K pace. For the marathon, your specific preparation is
optimized by your long runs, including your last long run, and by your recovery from that
last long run, a restoration which leaves you ready to run your best marathon on race
day.

Marathon schedules published on-line and in popular running-related magazines
almost always include a weekly long run – or at the very least a biweekly, elongated
training session. Shame! With a long run every weekend, your leg muscles are always
trying to recover from the impacts and abuses of the Sabbath effort at the same time they
are being asked to carry out Tuesday’s speed session and Thursday’s hill workout. That
just doesn’t work! It’s small wonder that two-thirds of marathon runners are injured
during their marathon preparations; their muscles are simply never given the appropriate
opportunity to recover from the prolonged exertions of the weekend. A far better strategy
would be to carry out a long run every three to four weeks. That would still allow you to
learn how to run long, and it would permit much higher-quality training during the weeks
which don’t have a muscle-numbing long run on the prior weekend. The result? You’ll
be fitter and healthier on race day, and your chances of achieving your marathon goal will
be greatly increased. © MARATHON PROGRAMS