Going the distance

I really wanted to post yesterday but I did my long run, almost 19 miles, and the only titles that were rambling around in my head were “Holy moley my legs hurt” and “Oy vey I can’t move.”  After some sleep and a little birthday cake at a toddler birthday party yesterday, I’m ok to sit upright long enough to type.  Ok, it’s not that bad.  I’m just a little achy.

I ran into my friend who is training for her first 1/2 marathon on the trail, she was set to do 7 miles yesterday.  I know that the fact that I was doing more than twice as many seemed a little overwhelming to her but it wasn’t that long ago when doing 7 seemed like that to me.  People who are newer to running or training for their first distance race can look at people who are routinely running marathons and think “that’s so far, I’ll never get to that point.”  But the truth is, we all start from a base of zero.  I didn’t just open my door one day and run 20 miles.  In fact when I first started running I would add in some walking.  I’d run 9 minutes and walk a minute, when training for my first marathon I always did a little walking during my long runs.

There’s no magic bullet in running, if you want to be able to run farther then you have to, well, run farther.  The easiest way to build your long run mileage is by adding 1-2 miles a week to your long run.  Going from a 5 mile run to a 10 mile run would be overwhelming physically and psychologically if you tried to make that jump at once.  But adding just one mile a week to your base of 5 miles builds your endurance gradually.  It’s easier to mentally adjust too, telling yourself it’s only ONE extra mile makes it seem much more do-able.  You get to the point too where everything’s relative. Once you do a 10k, a 5k seems like a piece of cake, when you finish a marathon you can knock off a half-marathon much easier.

Some people are better sprinters and doing long runs don’t seem worthwhile, but even if you’re not training for a longer race, there’s value to the long run.  Here’s a good Runner’s World article about the merits of long runs.  Even when I’m not training for a race I like to do a long run on Sundays, old habits die hard I guess.

Here’s an appropriately titled pick for your running mix, Run On.