The Myth of the Weekly Long Run

Do you do a long run each and every week, no matter what time of the year or phase of training you are in?

This topic has been on my mind recently, especially after reading a great piece in Canadian Running Magazine titled "Why You Don’t Need to Do a Long Run Every Weekend." It echoed something I wrote about a while back in my own post, "Church of the Long Run: What Are You Scared Of?"

The weekly long run is basically running culture at this point. But performance coach Steve Magness summed it up perfectly: “You don’t have to do a long run every week. Long runs are great. But you don’t have to marry them.”

The Origin Story (A Misunderstanding)

The modern obsession with the weekly long run comes from a misinterpretation of the legendary Arthur Lydiard. His 1983 book, Jogging with Lydiard, helped explode the popularity of running, but the concepts were often sensationalized and applied without context.

Lydiard's runners didn't do long runs forever. They used them early in the season to build a massive foundation for what came next: a grueling interval block. Just look at a typical training week from that specific phase:

• Mon: 3 miles + 48 x 50m sprints

• Tue: 1200m Time Trial

• Wed: 6 x 400m (at 1500m pace)

• Thu: 3 miles @ 15k pace

• Fri: 3 x 200m all out

• Sat: 8-12 x 800m repeats (@ 5k pace)

• Sun: 2-hour Long Run (between 1-hour and 2-hour race pace)

Notice the context? They were doing intervals 6 days a week. The Sunday run wasn't a slow jog; it was a high-quality aerobic maintenance run designed to hold onto gains while surviving a brutal week. We took the Sunday Long Run but left out the context.

The Vase and the Boulders

To understand why you don't always need a long run, you have to look at your total capacity. Think of your training ability like a glass vase.

The major elements of your training, the long runs and high-intensity intervals are big boulders. If you just keep shoving boulders into the vase (a long run every single Sunday), eventually you run out of room, or worse, the vase shatters (injury).

To build a solid structure, you need sand and pebbles to fill the gaps and support those boulders. This is your frequency, your strength training, and your mobility work. These "little things" stabilize the big things. If you ignore the sand because you are too busy wrestling another boulder into the vase, the whole structure becomes unstable.

Your Calendar Is Not a Training Plan

A seven-day "training week" is a human invention, not a physiological need. A growing number of elite coaches are moving to blocks longer than a calendar week.

Why? Because training only works when you recover from it. Research shows that when high-demand training drags on without enough recovery, athletes veer toward non-functional overreaching. A longer cycle gives you room to place hard days and ease off before you are forced to.

My Question for You

Often, the answer to "how do I get better?" isn't another 2-hour run. It is usually found in what you are doing the other 22 hours of the day.

When you look at your own "vase," are you just trying to cram in more boulders? Or are you paying attention to the sand the frequency, the strength, and the recovery that actually holds it all together?

Links for the post:

• Canadian Running Article: Link to Canadian Running Article

• My Previous Post: Church of the Long Run