Sunday morning is the long run with the lads, although over the years this may have morphed from a Saturday to a Sunday , the weekend long run is the bread and butter run of marathon and long distance runners. We all know that , in the foundation stage at least, this run should be about time on feet. The long run is a reward for all the hard runs you may have completed in the week, it’s a time to smell the roses and eat the pancakes, while enjoying great coffee. Hell, it should actually be time to enjoy running for the pure pleasure of just running. No need to look at the watch (but you must wear a GPS enabled Strava friendly watch of course, otherwise the run never happened!) and time to look up from the pavement and actually enjoy the view of your running surroundings. (Living in Perth and running normally on bike paths close to the ocean this may be a tad easier for me but still you can find beauty anywhere, you may just need to look a bit harder sometimes.)

Over the last 6 months I have been adding distance and doubling up daily and this has been a success, as you can see from my Strava extract. Since Christmas, there has been no slacking off and I feel my body is getting use to the extra workload and I still look forward to every run but….

Recently my friend Mark ‘one speed’ Lee has been joining me for some of my early morning 10k ‘old faithful’ runs and this has made the pace a tad more competitive. This Monday for instance we ended up finishing sprinting up the last hill sub 4min/k pace, on an easy recovery run after the Sunday long run in Bold Park. Not a good idea for us distance fans. This was compounded by a couple of runs early in the week with Justin ‘one pace and it’s quick’ Kelly, after I specifically told him recovery. To add to my pain the runs with Justin were in the middle of the day, so add in heat !

This mornings 24k was again meant to be a time on legs, still recovering from the ADU 100k a few weeks earlier, type of run. Not a chance, with Mark leading from the front we went out pretty hard and came back even quicker. Mark did leave us at one point allowing me to slow the pace a tad but unfortunately (for me) he got lost and rejoined us for the last 5k.

I think you can see the Mark effect from about 20k onwards. Of course you can let Mark go on his merry way but he has the knack of drawing you in and before you know it you’re in a mad dash to the finish. Call it a competitive nature or just plain silly, I suspect at my age it is the latter. (I’m fifty now you know.)

The moral of this story is this week I have been feeling the extra pace thanks to my training partners from hell Mark and Justin. Both are younger, faster and ,at the moment, running less weekly kilometres; add these three things together and you have one very tired 50 year old runner. There is a silver lining to this week of pain of course. If you can survive the experience I believe you come out the other end a better runner but there is the caveat that too many of these weeks will eventually lead to exhaustion and fatigue , which in turns leads to injury. Running the weekly distances I’m currently running I need to be mindful of the 80%-20% split with 80% being easy runs , not the mark Lee version of 20%-80%. (Matt Fitzgerald would not approve!)

The long run is probably the one run just about every runner gets wrong, it’s not in our nature to slow down to a point that you feel there is no benefit. A favourite run of mine is the last 5-10k at marathon pace which may be down to the fact that I feel I haven’t done enough so flog myself so when I’m wolfing down the post-run pancakes I don’t feel guilty. Is this the right approach, according to most coaches probably not but we are fickle things us runners and although we set of with good intentions the next thing you know you’re chasing Mark Lee at the end of your long easy run at sub 3:50min/k pace ! Trust me it happens, I’m sure every running group has a Mark Lee type runner who will push the pace and like rats following the Pied Piper we will follow. On the bright side the pancakes do taste better when you feel you’ve put in a big effort but that’s not the point of the run.

So what to take from this post.? Google ‘Long Slow Run’ and read the results, they will backup the ‘it’s a time on legs run‘ predominately, then next weekend when you are just about done and someone starts to up the pace think about this post and let them go. Long term it’s the thing to do. I reckon the post run pancakes will taste just as good, probably ?