How Do Long Runs & Long Rides Work & Benefit Endurance Athletes? - Coach Tip Tuesday

Long runs and long rides are cornerstones of many training plans for endurance athletes.  But why are these types of workouts so integral to endurance training plans?  Are they really necessary, or can athletes get the same benefits from doing different (namely, shorter) workouts?

What is a Long Run or Long Ride?

The simplest definition of a long workout is this: It is the longest workout of a particular discipline (such as swimming, biking, or running) in a training week, which is also known as a microcycle.  Long workouts - such as long runs or long rides - are included in training plans due to the principle of progressive overload.  Also sometimes referred to as the principle of over distance, progressive overload involves gradually increasing the frequency, intensity, or volume of an activity over the course of a training plan in the interests of stimulating desired adaptations in the body to help athletes reach their endurance sports goals.  

These desired adaptations can include (but are not limited to): fatigue resistance, muscular and soft tissue strength, cardiovascular endurance, increased bone density, increased heart volume, lower blood pressure, and lower cholesterol.  In addition to physiological adaptations, long workouts can improve athletes’ mental strength and confidence.  All of these these physiological and mental benefits are important for athletes who want to do endurance events, and especially for athletes who want to do long-course endurance events (such as half marathons, marathons, Half-Distance Triathlons, Full-Distance Triathlons, etc.).  Practically speaking, long workouts help prepare athletes for the specific demand and distance that they will encounter on race day.

What is the Principle of Progressive Overload or Over Distance?

Over the course of a training plan (which can vary in length from anywhere from 12-52 weeks), long workouts are gradually increased in blocks called mesocycles.  A mesocycle is a period time in training that is generally anywhere from 3-4 weeks (microcycles) long and includes 2-3 “up” weeks when training intensity, frequency, and/or volume is gradually increased week over week followed by a “down” week of recovery when intensity, frequency, and/or volume is reduced slightly from the previous 2-3 “up” weeks when things were increasing.  Stacked together to create a macrocycle (aka an entire training plan or entire training year), structuring mesocycles this way gradually increases an athlete’s overall ability to do more in training - whether that “more” comes in the form of distance, duration, or intensity.

Practically speaking, the principle of progressive overload looks something like this in an athlete’s training:

• In one week, an athlete’s long workout is planned to be 60 minutes long.
• In the second week, an athlete’s long workout is planned to be 70 minutes long.
• In the third week, an athlete’s long workout is planned to be 50 minutes long.

The first week in a mesocycle like this is planned around an athlete’s current training capacity, or what they can currently do with relative ease. (Capacity is how much stress a tissue or part of the body can withstand before degeneration, snapping, or breaking.)  In subsequent weeks, the long workout is planned to be 10-20% longer or more intense than the previous week.  After 2-3 weeks of building like this, the long workout is reduced by 15-30% in a recovery week to allow the body to build back stronger so it is prepared for the load of future “up” weeks.  

How is the Principle of Progressive Overload Used in Training Plans?

Using the principle of progressive overload, the mesocycle that follows the one described above could look something like this in an athlete’s training:

• In one week, an athlete’s long workout is planned to be 75 minutes long.
• In the second week, an athlete’s long workout is planned to be 90 minutes long.
• In the third week, an athlete’s long workout is planned to be 60 minutes long.

The first week in the second mesocycle basically starts off where the previous mesocycle “left off”.  This strategy is repeated many times over the course of a macrocycle or Annual Training Plan so that an athlete’s endurance and stamina is significantly increased at the end of the training plan from where it started at the beginning of the training plan (12-52 weeks earlier).

There are a few things that are important to note when planning training using the principle of progressive overload.  The first is this: In many - if not almost all - cases, athletes will not complete the distance of their race in training.  Rather, they will complete a percentage of that distance or duration as their longest workout in training in preparation for the race.  Using the example of training for a marathon: Athletes will not run 26.2 consecutive miles in training; they will complete 16-22 miles in their longest training run.  This is for a number of reasons including: It is possible to be prepared for a given race distance without actually doing the full distance in training, training to less than the distance required on race day incurs less injury risk, athletes recover better (and are thus better able to handle subsequent training) with loads like this, and training tends to fit more practically into athlete’s lives this way.    

Second, If athletes are targeting a specific goal race (and therefore a specific goal race distance), they should work “backwards” from the race’s date when planning training and plan their long workouts based on how long they have to train for the race and what their current fitness level is.  Let’s imagine that the following things are true:

• You are training to run a marathon that is taking place in 26 weeks.
• You can currently complete a long run of 60 minutes.

You can complete a mesocycle like the one outlined above (where you complete a long workout that is 60 minutes long in Week 1), and then build in consecutive mesocycles until you reach a long workout duration of about 195 minutes in Week 24 (allowing a two-week Taper Phase before race day).  How long your longest workout actually is will depend on variety of factors, including how long you have to train for the race, what level of fitness you start from in training, what ratio of up to down weeks works best for you, and what you have going on in your “regular” life while you are training for the race.

Remember that what you do now impacts what you are going to be able to do later on.  Athletes should only progress their training based on what they can actually currently do and at rates that are safe.  In practical terms, this may very well mean that you do not get to the “longest possible” distance or duration in training.  This is very okay; it is much more preferable to show up slightly “under trained” and uninjured on race day than to risk injury by doing too much too soon by pushing for a longer distance or duration in training.

How Exactly Do Long Workouts Benefit Endurance Athletes?

As mentioned earlier, long workouts stimulate a lot of desired adaptations in the body.  Over the course of a macrocycle or an annual training plan, your heart not only gets stronger, it gets larger.  After about 12 weeks of consistent training, the left ventricle of the heart muscle becomes thicker, which helps the heart pump blood more efficiently.  This efficiency comes in the form of increased stroke volume, or the amount of blood that the heart is able to pump with each beat.  When stroke volume is increased, maximum heart rate and resting heart rate decrease (because the heart needs to beat fewer times to pump the same amount of blood around the body).  All of this increases cardiovascular endurance; improved cardiovascular endurance can lead to lower blood pressure and cholesterol.  Additionally, tissues in the body grow stronger.  Bone density, tissue resilience, and muscular endurance all increase when we place load on the body.

Some of the most important benefits of long workouts occur in the muscle tissues themselves.  There are several types of muscle fibers in the body: Type I muscle fibers (commonly referred to as slow-twitch muscle fibers) are a type of muscle fiber that are responsible for endurance movements.  They are essentially fatigue resistant by their very nature, but they can get damaged.  Athletes who seek to swim, ride, or run long distances or durations will damage these muscle fibers in the later stages of a long workout when they are exceeding their current training capacity, and this compromises the Type I muscle fibers' ability to take in fuel.  Because of this, there will be a point where Type I muscle fibers will not be able to produce the power that is necessary to keep going anymore and the body needs to switch over to recruiting and using Type II muscle fibers.  Type II muscle fibers (commonly referred to as fast-twitch muscle fibers) are a type of muscle fiber that are responsible for short, powerful movements.  

Though there are three types of Type II muscle fibers that exist in animals (Type IIa, Type IIb, and Type IIx), humans only have two types of Type II muscle fibers: Type IIa and Type IIx.  Unlike Type I muscle fibers, Type IIa muscle fibers do fatigue, and they fatigue very quickly when compared with Type I muscle fibers.  The body will initially switch over to recruiting Type IIa muscle fibers when Type I muscle fibers start to become damaged during a long workout, but once those are fatigued, the body will need to switch over to recruiting to using Type IIx muscle fibers to produce the power required for the task at-hand (such as running or cycling). 

In a long workout, one of the most important adaptations we are seeking is aerobic endurance globally (aka across multiple systems) in the body.  Contrary to what a lot of people think and/or have been told, Type II muscle fibers have the ability to function both aerobically and anaerobically.  Cells in the body produce energy via a process called glycolysis.  Glycolysis is a metabolic pathway and cellular process that converts glucose molecules into energy (in the form of adenosine triphosphate or ATP) for use and storage at the cellular level; glycolysis can be conducted aerobically or anaerobically.  Working aerobically means that the muscle fibers are conducting glycolysis and generating energy in the presence of oxygen.  Working anaerobically means that the muscle fibers are conducting glycolysis and generating energy without oxygen being present.  

Aerobic glycolysis is more sustainable than anaerobic glycolysis because of the presence of oxygen.  Without the presence of oxygen, the body’s cells start to produce lactate (a by-product of both aerobic and anaerobic glycolysis) at a rate faster than the body’s cells can consume it.  (On a related note: The body produces lactate, not lactic acid, and there is no such thing as “lactic acid” in the human body.  This is an inaccurate and outdated term and way to reference this process.)  This point when we produce lactate faster than we can metabolize or consume it  is called lactate threshold and when this point is reached, we fatigue very quickly (this is when we can “feel the burn”).  Because we get fatigued, we need to slow down (which switches us back to aerobic glycolysis) in order to keep going.

Type II muscle fibers fatigue more quickly than Type I muscle fibers because they generally prefer to generate energy anaerobically.  However, they can be trained to work aerobically.  When Type II muscle fibers are working aerobically, they increase their time to fatigue, which is an important part of building overall global aerobic endurance in the body.

While this is a bit in the weeds, it’s important to spell out because it illustrates in a very real way why long workouts are so important.  At the beginning of a long workout, you are primarily using Type I muscle fibers to do the work.  But at the end of a long workout, as you reach and then move beyond your current training ceiling, you are utilizing an entirely different system when you are recruiting Type IIa and Type IIx muscle fibers.  What you are working and training at the beginning of a long workout is not the same thing that you are working and training at the end of a long workout.  By forcing Type IIa and Type IIx muscle fibers to work aerobically, you train these fibers to become more fatigue-resistant.  And by recruiting more muscle fibers overall over the course of a workout, we build strength, endurance, and stamina.

I explain all of this to get to this very important point: It is only possible to train systems like this at the end of long workouts.  The only way we get to the end of a long workout is to complete the part of the workout that precedes it.  In other words: There is no way we can derive these same benefits any other way or by doing shorter workouts; we must go longer or further than we’ve gone in our recent training workouts in order to train these systems, to stimulate these adaptations, and to derive these benefits.  I’ve talked before about how it’s very okay if the end of a planned workout feels tough.  It’s okay because that planned workout is designed to help you exceed your previous training capacity and increase your current training capacity.  

Fatigue resistance - aka the ability to go longer and further without getting tired or needing to stop - is basically the entire name of the game for endurance athletes.  Endurance sports are so named because one must endure to be successful in these sports.  The word “endure” means “to exist in the same condition”, “to experience (pain or suffering) for a long time”, and “to deal with to accept (something unpleasant)”.  Essentially, “endure” means to exist in a state of discomfort and to understand that a desired result will take a long time to achieve.  In other words, patience and the ability to go long is required for success in endurance sports.  As such, long workouts are critical components to the success of endurance athletes, both acutely within a single training season and over the course of several consecutive training seasons when athletes are training consistently.

The Bottom Line

Long workouts confer an entire host of benefits for endurance athletes, and thus should be included in the training for all endurance athletes.  These types of workouts only produce adaptations desired by athletes when athletes get to the “long” (or late) part of the workout, and there isn’t any short-cutting or hacking this process.  By including long workouts in training, endurance athletes will increase their overall resilience, endurance, and strength to help them achieve their goals.

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Sources:

McGill, E. A., & Montel, I. (2017). NASM Essentials of Personal Fitness Training (Fifth). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Robergs, Robert, et al. “Lactate, not Lactic Acid, is Produced by Cellular Cystolic Energy Catabolism”, Physiology, 12 December 2017.