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A long run is the long distance run that provides the gentle challenge through
mileage extension
which will develop the exact endurance necessary
for getting you to the finish line.
this will be the cornerstone of your training and fitness.
it starts with the longest distance you've covered
within the last two weeks,
as you lengthen the long run to fourteen miles for a half,
or twenty six miles for a full marathon, you build the exact endurance needed to
complete your target race.
a detail training plan can be found in that dvd run.
Now, you may be asking yourself why do i need to do the full mileage of my race
before the race?
Well, i found out that the place where you might hit the wall is the distance of your
last long-run within the last two to three weeks before you race.
the wall is a debilitating state of fatigue,
within a few hundred yards you go from feeling very tired to feeling like
you just can't go on anymore, and the most common reason for hitting the wall is
that you haven't run far enough in preparation for your event. our training
program
lead you right up to the distance that
you will need in order to complete your event.
while there are significant and continuing physical benefits from going farther
regularly, the mental ones
are even greater.
this produces mental momentum,
self-confidence, and a
positive attitude.
it also reduces the number of negative messages that most people get who do not go up to the full distance in
preparation for their race.
you only have to do the long run
every other week once you reach five miles and a half marathon or ten miles
in the full. Let's talk about what to do on the non long-run weekends.
most you're going to do is slow
run walk about half the distance of the current long one
up to seven miles. you may also take this opportunity
to do some cross-training. but look at the schedule and you can figure out what to do.
On two to four of these easy weekends is wise to test your improvement using
the magic mile.
this will help you predict where your phase is
in both training and in racing.
The galloway program has a number of unique elements that allow you to gain control
over your fatigue, virtually eliminate injury,
monitor your progress, and tell you pretty much exactly how slow you need to
go on long runs. therefore, eliminating that causes of most injuries.
the bottom line is that
you can't go too slow on the long runs, and the magic mile will tell you what that
slow pace should be, but
even if you run two, three, four, or five minutes per mile slower
than your current capability in the marathon or the half marathon, you're
still going to get all of the endurance of that long run.
let's go through the procedures of the magic mile as to how it should be done.
the magic mile is the very best way i have found to determine what is an
appropriate pace both a goal in the marathon itself, and also a long-run pace.
At the first part of the season,
you will run your first magic mile for time. go to a track, run four laps around
the track and time yourself.
the first time you do it though, don't run fast, just run about the pace that you
normally run. You could pick up the pace of tiny tiny bit at the end, but do not
sprint,
and of course
do not puke. I'm against puking, so after you've gotten your time on the first
magic mile
your purpose, and mission on the second one is to beat that first time. and on
each successive magic mile, you continue to shoot for running your fastest magic
mile time, each time.
that magic mile becomes very predicted as to what you're capable of doing. and a
half marathon or a marathon,
because over the years
i've crunch the numbers, i have taken over fifteen thousand instances of people
running the magic mile, and then compared it with what they ended up running. And i have
found that most people tend to slowdown twenty percent when they go to
a half marathon, and thirty percent in the marathon.
that means that a person
that ends up with their fastest magic mile of ten minutes flat could be
expected to run a really hard half-marathon in twelve minutes per mile,
and a really hard full marathon in thirteen minutes per mile. now we don't want first
time marathoners or half marathoners to go all out and try for these
times, but at least you know what these times would be.
the most important function of the magic mile is to determine what your
long-run pace should be, and that's determined very simply by adding two minutes
to what is predicted in the marathon, even if you're training for the half
marathon. so the example here someone that runs a ten minute flat magic mile
as their fastest magic mile, multiply by one point three. that predicts a really
fast marathon pace of thirteen minutes per mile, so that person should be
running no faster than fifteen minutes per mile on their long runs.
the main concept here is that the pace that
is recommended for long runs
is the fastest pace that you should be running on long runs. it's always fine to
run slower than that pace. all this means is that you will recover faster,
it all falls into place once you've done three or four long runs.