RTTC #240 How to Handle the Long Run When All You Know Is Run More Run Faster

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali breaks down the true purpose of the long run and why it has nothing to do with getting faster. 

She explains the "pink, gray, and green" pace spectrum, why zone two heart rate training can be misleading, and how to use pace testing to find your ideal easy pace. 

Dr. Ali also shares why changing only one variable at a time (distance OR speed, never both) is the key to avoiding burnout and injury, and what to listen to (and what to avoid) to help you slow down. 

This episode is a must-listen for any runDisney runner stuck in the trap of trying to run every run harder.

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  Hi, I'm Dr. Ali
  I've been running for 15+ years and been in the rehab space since 2012 when I earned my Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree. I get injury prone runDisney runners across the finish line without feeling broken.

Transcript

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Hey, how's it going? Today I'm talking about how to handle the long run when all you know is run more, run faster. This is Running to the Castle, a podcast for slow, back-of-the-pack Run Disney runners on a journey to running magical miles. Join me, Dr. Alley, as I share the secrets I've gathered as a runner, doctor of physical therapy, and coach. You'll learn the exact ways I get my clients to the castle strong, have a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, and have time to stop for character photos. Keep listening if your goal is to PR in fun, cross the finish line without feeling broken, and have energy to enjoy the Disney parks. When I'm talking about the long run, I mean the longest run of the week. It on my free training plans, it is listed as an easy long run. It's probably on Sunday. And it also could be, if you're doing a challenge, it could be the next longest long run that is also listed as easy or walk. So if you're doing the goofy challenge as an example, where you do the half marathon followed by the full marathon, you have some weekends where you are doing back-to-back long runs. That is to get into the groove, get your body adjusted and used to doing two, two days of running back to back as what you would be doing on race day for half marathon followed by the full marathon. So the long run are those runs, as opposed to I'm not talking about cross-training today. I'm not talking about speed workouts today. I'm not talking about 30, 20, 10, progression run hills, or tempo. I'm talking about long runs. These runs are easy. They are conversational. You should be able to sing during them. Go for a reverse PR, which means go the slowest you have ever gone on a long run. I would much rather hear a runner tell me, you know what? I walked my long run this week, as opposed to hearing them say, oh my God, I just got the fastest long run. I just PR'd my long run. I just got my fastest 5K, 10K, half marathon in a training run. That to me, I know it's really exciting to see the progress there. To me, I'm going to subconsciously, not even subconsciously, wait for the next four to six weeks for something to happen. Somebody's going to say, I got hurt. Somebody's going to say, I have no energy for this long run anymore. I'm going backwards. I'm regressing. This is not going well. I'm not motivated. I've lost motivation to run. I've been skipping two weeks of running. I did so good. And then all of a sudden, I've skipped two weeks because I didn't get out the door soon enough. I just didn't want to. The goal of the long run, remember, every run has a purpose. Run with purpose. The goal of the long run is to build time on your feet. Get your body used to being on your feet for however many minutes, hours you're going to be on your feet on race day, on the longest run of your race week. So if you're doing the goofy challenge, the goal of your long run is to build up time on your feet so that you can be on your feet for the entire length of time that you're going to be out there for the marathon. Now, the back-to-back runs is to get your body acclimated to being able to do it two days in a row at a long amount of time. Okay. So for the long run, did you hear me say that the long run is to get your fastest time? No, it's to build time on your feet. When you build time on your feet, you gain endurance. You build your body's ability to put one foot in front of the other, no matter how fast or slow, so that you can put one foot in front of the other and finish your race. On the long run, you will hear coaches say you should run a conversational pace. Yes, I agree with that. Some uh run coaches will say you should be able to sing during it. I also agree with that. Some run coaches will say things like you should stay in zone two. I kind of agree with that. And I'll talk about why kind of in a second. But that's really hard to gauge if you're doing it right. Because, you know, you're a lot of runners are out there on their own by themselves. They're not having a conversation with anybody. One way to combat that is to actually have a conversation with somebody or talk to yourself. Call somebody on the phone, bring a running buddy. And these are options, right? I'm not saying any one is better than the other. I like running by myself. Running is my me time. It is where I de-stress. It's actually where I come up with a lot of ideas to put out at podcast episodes. It gives me a lot of ideas of how to help runners because I can zone out and I just let my mind go. I listen to podcasts, I listen to audiobooks. Usually I'm listening to business-related podcasts and audiobooks. I do listen to some running-based podcasts. Not honestly, not a ton. I more listen to people talking about, you know, recapping races and in interviewing other people in the space, right? I feel like when other coaches listen to other coaches, there's a battle in trying to prove who's right. I'm not here to prove I'm right, right? I'm not gonna say what so-and-so says is wrong. It may not be what I personally and professionally recommend, but that advice works for somebody. And so I can't sit here and compare and contrast my recommendations with their recommendations because their recommendations may not be for anybody that's even listening to my podcast, right? So here are some options. What options do you think is best for you? And go from there. You know, if you're listening to this podcast episode, something I have said along the way resonated with you. And you were like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Or that I want to try that. And then you try it and you're like, oh, that worked. What else does she have to say? But somebody else might listen to the podcast one time and be like, oh, this lady's an idiot. None of this is relevant to me. And then they go on their merry little way. And so anyway, that was a very big tangent in talking about why I listen to different podcasts and the kind of podcasts I listen to or audiobooks that I listen to. And so I listen to those things on the long run. Now, notice I don't listen to music very much on my long run. I just, I didn't mention any music. I actually forgot. Very, very rarely I will listen to music on a long run. But when I listen to music on a long run, it is more of a slow beat. I will listen to more of like a folklore album, Taylor Swift folklore album, where it's more calm. Of course, there's, you know, a few faster, kind of faster things in there, but it's more of an overall calm vibe. I don't listen to upbeat. I don't listen to different uh workout type music for a very specific reason that I'll get into soon. So the long run, every run has a purpose. The purpose of the long run is to be on your feet for a prolonged amount of time a little bit more each week. And because we're runners, I do that a little bit more in the form of miles. You also could do it in the form of time. Instead of looking at how many miles, start off with time. If you're running a 15 minute per mile pace on average, then your first long run, the running portion, the run walk portion would be 45 minutes. Add in a 10-minute warm-up and a 10-minute cooldown. Now your first run is 65 minutes. Add 10% every week until you hit week six. Go back three weeks because that's the halfway point. Go back three weeks, do that same time frame. And then the next week, week seven, you add 10% to week five and you keep going up until you hit the six-week time frame again. And then you go back to that middle week. So you're doing a deload every six weeks, and you don't need to think about, you know, how much of a D load should I do? Just drop back to whatever the halfway point was at your previous at, you know, at week seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. Go back to whatever week that must have been week eight or nine, nine. I think it's nine. And then you just keep doing it until you hit your longest long run. If you're doing a marathon, it's about three weeks before race day. If you're doing a half marathon two weeks before race day, you should have your long run take you the amount of time your race is going to take you. So if that marathon, if you anticipate it's going to take seven hours, that longest long run should take you seven hours. If you think your half marathon is going to take you three and a half hours, that longest long run should take you three and a half hours. And I want you to go so slow that you could have a conversation, that you could be singing. I don't want you to run fast during this long run. The slower, the better. When we think about running with purpose, that also coincides with the gray zone, where the gray zone is this middle of the road zone of running, speed of running, pace of running, where it's not fast, but it's not slow, but it's hard enough that you're tired from the workout. So it gives you this false sense of I did a hard workout today. I got my heart rate up, my breathing was heavy, I'm sweating a lot, but you may still be in this gray zone as opposed to pink and green. So think of a line, think of a spectrum where the far left is pink. Pink are easy peasy lemon squeezy miles. Easy peasy pace. That is something that you could do all day. Like if you saw that pace on there, you'd be like, is this all I'm supposed to do today? That's nothing. That's a walk in the Disney park, maybe literally. Then all the way on the right, we have green. We have green miles, we have green paces. These are hard. These are fast. These are paces that you can only hit once in a 30-second period, and then need 10 minutes to recover from. You have this spectrum. So you have the bright pink all the way to the left, and you have the bright green all the way to the right. And as these colors come closer and closer into the middle, closer and closer together, their brightness starts dimming a little bit. And it's a little less pink because it's a little bit faster. It's a little less green because it's a little bit slower. And then a little less and a little less. And then at one point, because pink and green combined make gray, then you hit a point about three notches in that they start becoming gray. And then they become darker and darker and darker gray until it's smack dab in the middle. It's not black, but it is gray. So you have like three notches on either end where those are pink notches and they're pretty slow, but they're as the brightness dims, they're getting a little bit faster. So that are not quite too easy, but they're on the cusp. And then you have the green, and as it moves to the middle, it's a little less bright because it's a little slower. It's a little less fast, right? And so when I'm talking about these paces with my clients in stronger, faster finisher, I'm talking about them as easy, moderate, and hard. Easy are those pink miles. And easy, I ideally, the easy is the brightest of the pink, but the next couple of notches still are likely close enough. It's okay. I would like them slower on the long run. Then on the other end of the spectrum, the brightest of the bright green, that's your hard pace. That's the pace that you can do for one run interval. So if you do 30-30 run-walk intervals, that's a 30-second all-out sprint. Okay? Then you need 10 minutes to recover. If you move in a couple of notches, that's your moderate pace. Where it's not your fastest, fastest, fast, but boy, is this challenging. I'm gonna need five minutes to recover from this before I do this exact pace for this five-minute time period again. And anywhere in between is gray. We want to stay out of the gray zone for all of our training runs, whether it be speed workouts or easy long runs. On the long run front, those are easy miles. So we want them to be on the left side of that spectrum. We want them to be bright pink. Easy peasy. So other coaches may say run in zone two. I don't like that because that relies on other factors besides your actual pace and speed. Now, we will take that into consideration during things like the summer months, right? But zone two, excuse me, did I say it does not take into account? I can't remember. It doesn't take into account these other factors. So your heart rate may be falsely elevated, but you are running at your easy pace. And it still feels easy. So zone two is a little iffy because it's a relatively wide zone. And it ends up making runners frustrated because they could get out of zone two and be into zone three, which could still be an okay zone to be in for your long run. It could jump into zone three, even though you are running easy. It doesn't feel too, too hard, but it could be that way because you suddenly got startled. Somebody came running up behind you. A dog jumped over the fence and is running down the street after you. You were stressed out because of something else. And so then you might actually be running in zone three and then get upset and get frustrated. Now, could you still slow it down, be back in zone two, and that would be acceptable? Absolutely. But you may be frustrated with yourself where you felt like you had to go so slow. And that was all just because of these external factors. So I like to make the ideal situation and pace test. And I have multiple episodes about pace testing. I'm not going to go into that today. But when you pace test, you find your easy, moderate, and hard paces. And for the long run, you're going to use that easy pace. So in the ideal scenario, likely on the treadmill, this is the pace that is easy peasy lemon squeezy. You can sing, let it go during, you can um have a conversation during it. And I'm talking about the run portion of your run walk intervals. That's the pace I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the average pace overall between your run and your walk. I'm not talking about that average pace. Because that average pace can get there so many different ways. If you want your overall average pace to be 15 minutes per mile and you run 30, 30 intervals, you could run a 10 minute per mile pace during your 30-30 interval, and then you could walk a 20 minute per mile pace and you still come out to that average. But that 10 minute per mile pace, is that crazy hard? Is that a sprint for you? That's not easy. That's that's pushing your limits too high. If you want that 15 minute per mile easy overall average pace, I would recommend you run something like 14 minute per mile pace and then walk 16 minute per mile pace. That would get you to that 15 minute per mile easy average, right? But maybe you're thinking, well, I can't walk a 16 minute per mile pace. So I have to get up to an 18 minute per mile pace for my walk, but I still want that 15 minute per mile pace because Run Disney recommends that we train at a 15 minute per mile pace. But if you do 18 minutes, that means you still have to run a 12 minute per mile pace during your run interval. Is that easy for you? Is it easy for you? The answer may be yes, but for many runners who listen to this podcast, that's not an easy pace. And so then you need to slow it down even more. So that's why I recommend don't look at the average. I don't, you could walk a 25 minute per mile pace for all I care on the easy run, because the whole point, remember, the whole point is being on your feet week after week after week until you get to that longest long run. And then you're on your feet for the amount of time that that race will take you. So make the run portion easy and you test that with pace testing. So then you know exactly on my ideal situation, this is how fast or how slow I'm running. And then on all of the long runs after you pace test, that's the fastest that you can go. If you want an A for a grade on your long run, if you want to do it a thousand percent right in my mind, then your easy pace that you tested is the fastest you should ever go. Even better if you go slower, because that means you're on your feet for longer. You can have it all, you can't have it all at once. You can do it all, but you can't do it all at once. So if you're thinking, if you're thinking right now, Allie, if you're telling me that I should go even slower and you're telling me that I should walk even slower on this long run, I can't do that because I'm never going to be able to get faster for race day to stay ahead of the balloon ladies. Friend, when done right, this works. I have seen it with hundreds of slow Run Disney runners already. And that's because you go slow on these long runs. Remember, run with purpose. Every run has a purpose. And then you go and spend your cross training working on getting your walking faster. And then you go and spend your speed workouts spending time getting your run faster. So you get faster on your run on the speed workouts, you get faster on your walk on cross-training, like paced walking or incline walking. And then you get better at being able to be on your feet for the whole length of time of the race on the lung. You can work on it all, just not all in the same workout. It reminds me a little bit of, I've used this comparison in another episode before, but growing up, um, my my parents, my mom used to get us the um, what are they, the we sing videos, right? And so there was Magical Musical Mansion, and there was a guy who saw all of these other performances. He saw the quintet of the French horns, and he saw the such and such group, and he saw the magician, and he saw all of these different things. And they spend the entire movie going through and trying to figure out why each group is missing something. The French horns are missing a French horn. The magician is missing something, right? And it all boils down to this one guy who's trying to do it all, and he fails, and he's no good at any of them because he's trying to do it all at once. Instead, let's let the French horns do their French horn thing. Let's let the magician do the magician thing, and let's let all of these other ones, the ballet dancer and the tap dancer, do all of these other things individually. And then we get to go and enjoy them each individually. Similar concept with your workouts. You can have it all, you can do it all. You can't do it all at once. And when you do, that's a recipe for disaster. That's when you start being so exhausted that you can't do anything. And then that actually subconsciously makes you not. Want to go do your workout and you think you just aren't determined enough. You think you aren't motivated. You think you have poor consistency or poor timing or, you know, lack of schedule. When it started four weeks ago, when you started to go faster and longer and try and walk faster in your walk interval as well, all because you just tried to do it all at once. If you want to get your walking faster, work on your walk during cross-training. Do a paced walk. And a paced walk is literally using your run walk intervals, but you do walk-walk intervals. And so it's you walk for 30 seconds at a fast pace and you walk for 30 seconds at a slow pace. And I do recommend alternating them because if you're trying to get faster, it's really hard to just go out for a 45 minute walk at the pace that you're trying to do. But could you hold? Let's say you want to get to a 15 minute per mile walk pace, just totally within reason for most run walk runners in the Run Disney community. Let's say you want to get to 15 minutes per mile. Well, do you think you could do that for 30 seconds? Yes or no appropriately. Do you think you could do it for 45 minutes straight? Think of what your reaction is with just that statement that I just made. If your reaction to walking 15 minutes per mile pace for 45 minutes is, ooh, ooh, uh, I mean, I can give it a go. I, I could, I could, you know what? I could try it. I could try it. If that's your reaction, then that's too hard. And that's fine because this is that's not how we train to get somebody better. Anyway, you break it up into steps. And so the steps I recommend are 30-30 walk-walk intervals. Most runners tell me, oh, I could do anything for 30 seconds. Great. Do it. Do your 15 minute per mile pace walk for 30 seconds. And then on the alternate walk, slow it down to like 25 minutes per mile again. We don't care about that one. We care about the faster walk one. Use that other walk as recovery so that over time you can start saying, oh, yeah, I could walk that. And then once you feel comfortable walking every single interval and hitting every single first walk interval, the faster walk interval at that 15 minute per mile pace. Now you can increase the other. And that's how you do that. But you don't do it on the long run. I've strayed a little bit in this episode. I'm sorry about that. But the point is save that stuff for the cross-training. Save trying to get your run faster on the speed workouts. Yes, they're shorter. The endurance and the speed that you gain from doing all of these individually come together in the long run. It will take time, at least six months. At least six months. For some of you, it may even take 12 or 18 months, depending on where your fitness level is starting. But it will take even longer than that if you don't slow down because slowing down on the long run allows your body to not be double hit, right? Because if you have gone through school or have a science background, what's one of the first things they teach you about the scientific method? The first thing would be form a hypothesis, right? But one of the next things is change one variable at a time and do different tests for each variable to see which one is making the change, right? When you change more than one variable at a time, so in this case, for the long run, it would be distance and speed or pace. Okay. That would be, those are the two variables that you're changing when you go fast and try and go fast every long run. You're trying to go farther and faster, and you won't be a finisher because you end up exhausting yourself because you're doing two variables. You're changing two variables that stress your body out. Let's just stress our body out one way in each, in each workout. Let's stress, mm-hmm. Let's stress our body out on the long run by adding more time on our feet in the form of more miles or more decimal places of miles. If you follow my free training plans, the weirdest decimal places for your long runs 3.1, 3.41, 3.75, 4.13, 4.54, 4.99. Those are your first weeks of long runs for anything longer than a half a half marathon. No, no, for anything longer than a 5K. Stress your body out one way. We don't need to stress it out all of the ways. Stress it out one way. And then stress your body out with going faster only on the speed workouts. And you keep those trainings, those speed workouts, the same amount of time, 45 minutes with a 10-minute warm-up, 10-minute cooldown. So it's really only 25 minutes, which going shorter on those speed workouts allows you to go even faster. So you don't have to do it for 13.1 miles or however long your long run is that week. Stress your body out one way in each of the workouts. Because each workout has a different purpose. Each run has its own purpose. The long run is being on your feet for more time each week. Spend time on your feet, even if you have to walk some of those miles to make it so that it takes you that long. Great. I love it. Because when you're training for these races, you're doing it for months at a time. So you have multiple weeks to practice over and over and over again. And it's it's not always going to be fun. It's going to be a little frustrating. And the best thing you can do is slow it down even more. If you think you can't go any slower, I invite you to try. I invite you to try. One way that you can go slower, this is going back to something I said in the beginning. I only listen to audiobooks and podcasts on a slow run or folklore, on a long, easy, slow run, don't listen to fast-paced music. You're gonna catch yourself wanting to run faster to hit the beat, or because you're getting amped up from it. Listen to Ben Stein's lecture on anything and go at that pace, right? Like get the cadence of whatever his voice is. That's the ticket. Go slower. I don't listen to music on long runs. I don't recommend it. Podcasts, audiobook, maybe not true crime, because that might be getting your heart rate up. Listen to something that's interesting, but not going to, you're not gonna catch yourself being like, ooh, I wanna vibe to the beat of this one. Don't do that. Save those for your speed workouts because we want you to vibe to the beat. We want you to go for that fast beat cadence, pick it up, try and hit the rhythm. Not on the long, slow, easy run. You have weeks after weeks after weeks of these long, easy runs. The first thing I have runners do who want to get faster, the first thing I have them do is either stop their long runs or walk their long runs. Because I find that it's not that runners can't go faster on their speed workouts. It's that they go too fast on their long run that they're exhausted by the time their speed workout comes along. And so they can't hit those green paces because they've been running in the gray zone, which is kind of fast, not kind of fast, too fast to recover, but too slow to make any progress. And so they can't have the energy, they don't have the energy to hit those upper miles because they've gone too fast on their long run. So I recommend when they're first doing these trainings, if they can, now this is of course, if they are not actively training for a race, that they walk their long runs or they they just cut them out completely. And it's, you know, like a 45 minute or a 60 minute walk to guarantee that they are going slow enough to not stress their body out in two ways on that line.