When you see Usain Bolt get a bad start – which he does surprisingly often – and then see him hurtle ahead of the field to complete 100 m in under 10 seconds, you can’t help but be impressed. The sheer burst of power accompanied by extraordinarily long strides is just incredible, and is something that none of us is likely to ever match. However, if you asked Usain Bolt to win the Boston or London Marathon, he would probably be hard pressed.
Long-distance running is all about endurance, and about being able to manage the lactic acid buildup that comes with hours of activity. If you are running a sprint, you don’t care about this and can go flat out – but if you took the same approach with a long-distance race, you would quickly grind to a halt. Long-distance running, like other sports such as endurance car racing, requires you to continue to perform at your best over a long period of time – and that needs a different strategy.
When we talk about endurance training, we need to understand what endurance is. This is the ability to continue under pain while still maintaining a constant level of performance. The goal of endurance training is to increase your capacity to do this, and specifically to increase your VO2 Max – the maximum capacity of your body to transport and use oxygen when you are exercising – as well as your anaerobic threshold, which is the point at which lactic acid starts to accumulate in your body. Both of these are linked, and so they tend to improve together. Endurance training increases both of these by stressing your body and then letting it recover. This is repeated over and over again so that your body learns to cope with additional stress and therefore has more stamina. Endurance training is incredibly important because of this, and should make up about 50% of any long-distance training plan.
There are actually two different types of endurance training – extensive and intensive. The first of these trains your body to continue running for long periods of time without stopping. The second teaches your body to perform at a more intensive level for shorter periods of time – not over a sprint, but for 30 to 60 minutes.
Extensive training is all about long, slow running. This is a run that starts initially between 6 and 10 miles – if you can’t run 6 miles yet, then you’re not ready for endurance training. A typical plan involves running once every weekend, starting in that 6 to 10 mile range and then increasing the distance each weekend by 1 mile until you reach a distance somewhere between 12 and 16 miles, depending on the level you are trying to achieve. After that, you do the run once every second weekend, and alternate with other types of runs depending on your specific training plan. Of course, you can choose any day of the week, but keep it consistent, since varying the time between runs will reduce the effectiveness of the training.
If you are a beginner, maintain a pace where you can still talk in short sentences during your long runs. Intermediate runners need to target about 70% of their maximum heart rate when setting the pace, and advanced runners should target 80% of their anaerobic threshold heart rate. Make sure you understand the difference between the two heart rates, since they are very different. Also, keep in mind this is about building endurance when you are running aerobically, so there’s no point in trying to push it too hard.
The second part of endurance training is intensive training, which is about helping you to cope with the intensity of a real marathon. These will also help to raise your anaerobic threshold. If you are a beginner, then don’t worry about doing this type of run until you reach an intermediate level. Both intermediate and advanced runners need to experiment until they find a point where they can run at an even pace for between 30 and 60 minutes, while maintaining a relatively constant heart rate near to their anaerobic threshold. In fact, intermediate runners should do two different types of run, one of which is in the lower half of the anaerobic zone, and the other in the upper half of the anaerobic zone. A similar approach applies to advanced runners – some runs are in the L3 zone, which is the target pace for your actual marathon, while others are in the L4 zone, somewhat above marathon pace.