189. Why Adding Spice to your Long Runs is a Game-Changer with Coach Lu

right? If it's like their first time doing these types of long runs and doing a specific distance whether it's 16 miles, 18 miles, 20 miles, right? Like that's not who we're talking about, you know, usually not the first time marathoners. However, if it is a very well accomplished half marathoner who is used to doing these types of runs, then they could benefit from this type of training. Are you constantly worried about getting injured or you don't know how to get faster as a runner and you want to continue to run for stress relief? Then this is the podcast for you. Welcome to Healthy Runner, the only place that provides you with training tips, injury recovery, and prevention tools with actionable strategies by experts in the running industry so you can develop a stronger running body and feel confident that you can overcome any obstacle as a runner. I'm your host, Dr. Duane Scotty, Avid Runner, running physical therapist and coach, educator, founder of Swarth Healthy Runner, where we help dedicated runners get stronger, run faster, and enjoy lifelong injury-free running with the perfect online running coach, even if you've been told to stop running with an injury or you think coaching is just for fast runners. Learn more about our signature coaching program at Learn.SparkHealthyRunner.com. Every week on the show, we coach you to grow as a runner just like the process of building a strong, durable home that will last a lifetime requiring little maintenance. The design and planning is your mindset. The foundation is your strength training. The framing is your run plan. The electrical and plumbing is your nutrition. The insulation, drywall, and flooring is your recovery. The landscaping and exterior is your race strategy. If you master the six parts of growing as a runner, your running will be strong and last long hitting PRs well into your 40s, 50s, and beyond. Every week we help a runner just like you build their dream home. I'm your host, Dr. Duane Scotty. Welcome to the Healthy Runner podcast. Before we get into this episode, if you are looking for a nutritional advantage to increase mental focus, strength, and endurance during those runs and decrease the recovery time between those hard effort sessions, you will want to check out perform from the amino company. Later on in this episode, I will tell you more about perform and how it can help you stay focused, get harder work out in and improve overall recovery on your journey of becoming a stronger, faster, lifelong, injury free runner. Or you can check out the research for yourself at aminoco.com slash healthy runner. Are you tired of the same monotonous long runs? Do you ever feel like your training needs a little something extra to keep you motivated and excited? Are you not only looking to finish that half marathon or marathon, but you're looking to finish fast? Look no further. We have the solution for you to transform your long runs with a touch of spice. Welcome to episode 189 on the Healthy Runner podcast where we help you get stronger, run faster, and enjoy lifelong injury free running. I have Coach Lew back on the show from our Healthy Runner coaching team to spice up your long runs with a touch of flavor. Welcome back on the show. Lew, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. I'm glad to be back. We're excited to have you back and yeah, fill us in on how has your Chicago marathon training been going? You're about probably halfway through this training cycle, like I am for my goal marathon. How are things been going with that? It's the same weekend as your marathon. Yes, indeed. I guess I can start with introducing myself. I'm Coach Lew here, and I'm a coach in the SPARF team, and I'm a run coach and person trainer. I run a lot of, I've been training different distances from 5K, 10K, marathon, half marathons, and I myself run different distances as well. And yeah, I've been working with the way and have several episodes about advanced marathon training and different cases. And today is, we talk about very important thing about the long run with spice. And yes, I'm training for Chicago marathon this year. Unfortunately, my training is not going too well. I get some injuries, so I have to adjust my goal. That's the thing. There's things happen, so you change your goal, so I may just enjoy the run and see how it goes. Yeah, no, that's a great point. We definitely always have to adjust for unforeseen circumstances. So yeah, I'm sorry to hear that you haven't been feeling 100% healthy during this training block. I know you've done some hard training in the past, and you did a lot of piecing of different marathons over kind of in your off season. So you got a lot of miles under those legs. And yeah, we'll definitely have to talk offline on what you've been feeling and what's going on from that standpoint. But I know we have a bunch of clients as well that are training for Chicago. Hopefully all of their training is going well. And you've been enjoying that. Yes, I'm so happy working with a bunch of spark clients that's running Chicago. And I'm pumped to meet everyone. Yeah, it's definitely exciting time of the year. And yeah, if anyone's listening to this and you guys are running Chicago, like reach out to Coach Liu on the socials, let them know that you'll be in town. Sure, Liu is going to do some type of shake out run day or two before the race. And yeah, he would love to connect with you guys. And thank you for introducing yourself. I just take it for granted now that you've been on the show so much that I just like skipped the whole intro part. But if you are new to our audience, yeah, Coach Liu is our definite, you know, marathon, you know, extraordinaire or a really fast running extraordinaire on our team. And, you know, he definitely give him the runners that are looking to be cute. Or, you know, if you're around that three hour or sub three hour mark, I'm going to put you with Coach Liu on our team. He does such a wonderful job with all the clients in our coaching program. So thank you for all you do for our community. And, you know, you've done so much. And I guess I also, you mentioned marathon training. So I also need to mention that our latest Spark Healthy runner resource has been created or marathon training guide for beginner and advanced runners with longevity in mind. And I know you've definitely contributed to the advanced marathon portion of, you know, this document and this kind of resource. And it's filled with a ton of videos, podcast episodes, trainings to really teach you the principles of marathon mindset, base building, strength training, nutrition, gradual progression, adequate rest and recovery and a well-rounded training to support your long-term running journey. So you guys can get your download by going to learn.sparkhealthyrunner.com forward slash marathon or just click the link in the show notes. But in this episode, Coach Liu and I are going to introduce you to the revolutionary concept of adding a little spice to your training. Not only will it make your runs more exciting, but it will also provide you with numerous training benefits with an elevation in your current running fitness. You know, spices are more than just ingredients for cooking. When added appropriately, two-year-long runs, they possess a powerful property that can enhance your physical performance. Imagine running with increased endurance and stamina. Sounds amazing, huh? And I'm not talking about the theory spice, cayenne pepper, which would add a little extra kick if you sprinkled a little bit of that into your hydration drink while running. I'm just not sure that's the boost you would be looking for. I know for me it would definitely give me heartburn. So it would be like a terrible run for me. But today we are going to introduce you to the innovative techniques such as interval training by incorporating high intensity burst with either tempo, half marathon or marathon paste miles, which help endurance and overall performance for race day. Not only will we discuss the physical aspects, but will also dive into the mental and emotional aspects of long distance running with spice. So whether you're a seasoned runner looking for a change or a newer marathon runner looking to hit that PR for your second or third race, this episode is for you. Don't let your long runs become mundane, embrace the excitement, variety and flavor that we have in store for you. Get ready to spice up your running routine and take your long runs to the next level. Without further ado, coach Lou, let's embark on a journey to transform the long runs for our listeners with a touch of spice. So let's get right into it. Yeah. So what are long run workouts or long runs with spice and how does that differ from like what we talked about in a previous episode with coach Whitney of kind of the standard long run. Yes, standard long run as you see in many, many online training plans, you just say, for example, 12 miles, 16 miles, there's no specific target of how you're going to run it. So just complete it. That's done. However, the long run spice, you spice things up. It's not just doing it that, just not just to finish it, you want to do it in a specific way that can challenge you your aerobic system and can challenge your individual system. And that's usually for people who's ready to run, go for faster and the distance is not a problem for them and just they're ready to go for faster runs. It typically starts with an easy run in the beginning and then go harder towards end. So it's you don't spice things up right at the beginning, you kind of cool warm up and then you spice things up. For example, 16 miles, long run spice, you can have half, so eight miles, easy. And then you have this spice, four miles, smartphone pace, and then two miles recovery and one mile tempo run and one mile recovery. So you see that you have really long, long, long recovery or easy run. And then you get something hard and at the end, it gets really harder. So when you're doing speed, you are running on your not-so-fresh legs, but then you learn to run faster on the not-so-fresh legs. So that's a typical long run spice. Of course, there are many, many different types which we will cover. But in general, it's something that's harder towards the second half or later half that the run and as a part of a long run, as a workout, not just to finish it. All right, so just like my shirt says, carbs give me spark. These long runs with spice give me a little spark as well. And just to kind of reiterate there, we're not just doing the same pace, you're not going at the same pace for this long run where it's like you're just lugging along, you know, at you should be at your easy pace, right? Like working maybe zone two, maybe of, you know, your heart rate or maybe getting to zone three. And when we add this kind of specific long run workout, we'll call it where you'll see that often used online. We just love like long run with spice. Lou, that was always what he said. So that's what I started using. Once we injected some of these, you know, marathon-paced runs or different paces into these long runs. But we do want to kind of spice it up toward the end when our legs are starting to get fatigued. So this isn't just for that person who's like, you know what? I got this like big gold front Chicago this year. I got in the lottery. And this is going to be like my first marathon. Like, this is not who should be doing this, right? If it's like their first time doing these types of long runs and doing a specific distance, whether it's 16 miles, 18 miles, 20 miles, right? Like that's not who we're talking about, you know, usually not the first time marathoners. However, if it is a very well accomplished half marathoner who is used to doing these types of runs, then they could, you know, benefit from this type of training. But it is more for, you know, this kind of, we're going to use, you know, loose air quotes here, advanced half marathon, marathon runners who are really looking to improve that time, be a little bit more competitive, get that PR, they're maybe stuck at this plateau in their running fitness journey and they're looking to like break through that plateau. And then I would also say is, you know, the physical therapist in me is going to say, you know, this is not for the injured runner, right? So if you're currently running through some Achilles' pain or you're currently running through some IT band pain, this would not be like the type of run to add into your training at this point. If you're starting to feel some of these, you know, injuries will call them, you know, during your training, right? So you got to make sure you're kind of healthy and, you know, you're not limited in your running due to our current injury. I wanted to take a quick pause from this episode to talk about a topic that I am extremely passionate about. And that is strength training in order to run so we can improve our performance by running faster or running longer. And we can also prevent the all too common stubborn running related injuries when we do the strength training. So do you want to know how I get in my strength training? How I remain focused for my gym sessions? And how I'm able to recover after the hard marathon specific training that I've been working on? I've been using amino company's product perform for over two years now as a truly healthy pre-workout, as opposed to some of those crazy, highly caffeinated drinks that you're going to see out there that just give you jitters and then you wind up crashing. Perform is an essential amino acid-based formulation that I simply add to water. I throw to my shaker bottle and I have it 30 minutes before run or gym workout. It tastes great and is extremely easy on your stomach. Perform helps improve mental focus, peak strength, endurance, reduces fatigue and increases muscle protein synthesis so you can recover faster from your runs or your strength sessions. And I'm not just saying that from like an N is one my personal experience. I actually brought on one of the leaders in amino acid research Dr. Robert Wolfe on the show back in episode 92 of the podcast. If you want a deep dive on the effects, the literature, tune in, listen to my chat or Dr. Wolfe, you'll be as impressed as I was and I wanted to make sure that I was putting something that was actually healthy into my body and so I checked out the real research and the science on this product. And since you are a part of our healthy runner community, you can save 30% off by using the code HealthyRunner just head to aminocode.com forward slash HealthyRunner. You have to use this special link. I put in the show notes to get your 30% off and use the code HealthyRunner. Now go ahead and give performer try. I know you're going to love it just as much as I have. Now let's get back into this episode. What are the actual benefits of these long run workouts or why should you know we incorporate these types of runs into our training? Well, these long runs are harder, so they definitely push to a higher level of endurance fitness and safely. And it also mimics the race condition that your legs are tired and you probably burn up your mental power as well. But then you speed up later in the run. So you are now starting from fresh legs. You are, you work pretty hard and then you pick up the pace. And the third advantage is helps with your pacing because all the speedwork to the end or in the later part of the run, you cannot start too fast. If you start too fast getting too spicy there, then you have stomachache, then you have to stop. So these are all helpful. Yes, the obvious help advantage is that it push their work harder. So that makes a long run harder than the normal, long run. And that mimics a race condition. But it also has a mental advantage that it gives you some idea that oh, your legs are not fresh, it's getting harder, but then you keep going getting harder and harder and getting faster, not just giving up. All right, so yeah, so what you mentioned there is physically it's going to actually provide us more stimulus to like improve our stamina and endurance and be able to hold a longer or a faster running speed or pace for like a longer duration, kind of like with Coach Kat and I talked about in like the tempo run episode, with the purpose of like those tempo runs. But now we're injecting some of this faster running in the long run. So from a physical standpoint, and like you said, it is increasing the demands of, you know, making this at a higher level. And then from what I'm hearing from you is just mentally, you know, for us to be able to complete these types of runs can really help us from like a just a mindset standpoint and really provide that extra like boost your confidence before your race that hey, like I am going to be able to run at this goal pace because like we've talked about many times on the show, Lou is, you know, we don't actually run usually at we never really run the distance at the pace that we want to do at a race because then that was racing and training. And we never want we always want to peak in our fitness right before our race, you know, recover a little bit, have a little taper. So now your legs are fresh and then you put it all out there on the course. So these runs, I know these have been extremely helpful for me and my training is just to provide like, hey, this was like a really hard run. I was able to overcome this. My legs weren't feeling the freshest and most of us are running our long runs like the end of our training week, right? So you've already run, you know, most of your weekly mileage, if you're running your long runs on the weekends, you know, that you do for the week and now your legs are, you know, they're not feeling fresh, right? And then when you can complete a workout where you're doing this, you know, double digit long run with some faster pace miles in it, it could be like such a huge confidence boost for you heading into your marathon. And I just want to reiterate the point that you made before Lou, because I'm sure it just like flew or the people's heads where you mentioned and when we get into, you know, the specifics of how we actually add these, but you mentioned it's the second half of the run as opposed to the first half, because there's so many runners out there, right? That we start working with in our program that are running our runs too fast. And it's going to be so much more beneficial for you to actually keep the long run in the beginning in check, you know, in the easy zone and then add these faster pace miles or minutes if you're doing time-based training later on in the long run. And versus, you know, just trying to run the whole thing at like a slightly faster pace than your easy pace, right? This is going to help you more from a physical standpoint and actually make more endurance fitness gains, but then mentally too, it really helps you when, you know, you're in those, you know, the second half of the long run and you're able to complete some like faster-paced, you know, miles as well. And I think you kind of alluded to the fact that not starting too fast also helps us with like our pacing strategy that we're going to use for race day. Is that what you're referring to? Because it kind of practices the reason. It's slow, slow, slow, slow going higher, higher, higher, and then really high and then go down. And one thing I want to add is that since long runs, the run that's most similar to your actual race, this kind of long-run spice may get even more similar to the actual race. It's because on the race day, you're not just, well, because the target, right, the race day, you're not just to finish it, you want to run fast. So if you include this fast miles in your long run, that makes it more closer to the race condition and that helps please both mentally and physically. Nice. So we're kind of mimicking some of what we're going to feel on race day without actually like racing, right, in training. Not allowed. All right, not allowed at all. That's a no-no. So when is the best time? When should we add in these long-run workouts or when is the best time to really add these spicy workouts into our training? Apparently, you don't start from the you don't do that in the first ever run in your training cycle. Usually it's just before the peak weeks because as you build up the mileage, you want to hit the mileage first and then add some spice. If you, usually we start in you don't, we are not supposed to keep a really high training intensity throughout the year because that race injury. So usually you start some really hard training. There's always a period. There's the training cycle. In the beginning of cycle, you start with easy runs, more lifting and you build up mileage as well. So long run are shorter, mileage are shorter and the training intensity are easier too. And then as you progress, the mileage get longer, intense you get harder. And towards the peak, but before that, your long run gets pretty long, let's say, for marathon, 16, 14, 16 miles, for half marathon, you get to 8, 10 miles. That's the time your long run is pretty decent. You can start to think of adding this spice. And we always start with adding a little spice instead of getting super spicy. So you add like a little like cinnamon, maybe some nutmeg before you add the cayenne peppers, what you're saying. Yeah. Like how you train yourself to eat spicy food, right? All right. So that makes sense. Like hopefully this is making sense for you guys, that we're injecting maybe a little bit in the beginning, middle portion of your training cycle, whether it's a half marathon build, a marathon build, maybe short bursts of just injecting a little bit of leg turnover, essentially. I like to call it as opposed to really doing any significant miles in that zone, which can just like spice up your long run, just for the boredom aspect, right? Like just to not be bored and just to get the legs turning over a little bit. But really, where we're doing any length of time that you're going to get into this specific structure, we're going to save that more to the middle portion. And when we're peaking in our fitness, and then the other thing that I heard from you, Lou, is that you like to make sure that that person can cover the distance. So let's take the marathon, for example, they've run 14 mile long run first, and then maybe the next week you would program a 14 mile long run. That's a little spicy, right? Where you add some of these miles in or the same thing for 16, right? Or 18. I hope you are enjoying this episode, and it is providing value for you. I wanted to take a brief moment to share a story of a real runner like you who is struggling with a common problem that you may be facing. Here is one of our athletes who got the guidance, support, and accountability from our healthy runner coaching team to get clarity and structure on the six steps to growing as a runner with personalized strength, nutrition, and run plans. I hope their story inspires you that there is hope to either get over your running injury or to continue getting faster or running longer so you can continue to get in those mental clearing miles and enjoy your running journey again. Here is their inspiring story. Hey everyone, so I just wanted to jump on here and talk about my experience working with Dwayne and his team for healthy runner coaching. So about the time of the COVID pandemic, I was running kind of casually every once in a while, but after my classes at the gym got canceled, I decided, hey, like this is perfect time to get back into running. And I just, you know, kind of ramped up on my own and it went okay, but I had some injuries starting to creep in. I got IT band syndrome, which is actually how I came across Dwayne and his podcast. I found an episode where he was talking about IT band syndrome and he recommended some exercises that I started utilizing right away and within a few weeks. It was totally better and I was on my way again training and I trained and ran a 10k and then I was gonna do a half marathon four weeks after that. And it was kind of a quick ramp up for me having, you know, not run those distances really ever never gotten into longer, longer distances before I did cross-country in high school but just had never gotten to that level. But and I decided to buy new shoes and then immediately do my first 10-mile run in them. And I ended up with a lot of foot pain and you know Dwayne's podcast had helped me before and I decided to reach out to Dwayne for help because at that point I just wasn't sure like I got this race in like two weeks. Am I even gonna be able to run it? So I met with Dwayne and he helped me out and I had a great race and then after that decided to do coaching and I did half marathon training with Dwayne and then kept going and also did half marathon and marathon training with Coach Lu. And it was really fantastic for me just as a really busy person having someone else put together the plan and also the resources if I start to have any pain or injuries start to creep in. Like having having that strength plan was definitely really helpful for me. And I just ran a half marathon a few weeks ago which was really similar to the half marathon that I ran right after meeting Dwayne for the first time that I had trained for basically on my own. And it was about seven minutes faster than that one and so I've seen huge improvements working with Dwayne and his team and honestly just had a really great experience. I hope sharing that story inspired you and provided you some hope. If you want the one-on-one structure accountability and support from our Healthy Runner Coaching team of experts, check out the behind-the-scenes video tour of our Signature Coaching program. You just heard about including other stories from runners who are just like you and we're struggling with the same sticking points before they signed up for our program. Just head to learn.SparkHealthyRunner.com to learn more and book your strategy call with me today. Now let's get back into this episode. So yeah, let's talk about how we can incorporate these types of runs into our training. Maybe you can provide us with like three types of long run variations that you know would be like typical that you would program for a runner. Maybe perhaps starting with like the most basic or like entry level to some spicy long runs and then progressing to you know more of an example of an advanced programming you would give an athlete. Sure that there are so many, so many possibilities depending on where you're training are and what you finish are and your mileage and the runner and injury history a lot. But let's take something really general. Let's take this example. It's 16 mile runs. If you're beginner just do the easy run. Keep it easy. If you beginner if you want to finish it then do it easy that points not to get injured. So don't add any spice. No spice. Then if you're advanced beginner that maybe you have done one or two marathons or you have done a few half marathons and really strong half marathons and you've done a lot of consistent mileage. So then you can add some spice. What I usually start is for example that's 60 miles. You start with 12 miles easy, two miles at marathon pace and two miles recovery. Two miles marathon pace is not going to break you but it's pretty hard. It's a pretty hard workout that just give you body a little bit of feeling of the half marathon pace is and it's really late to weather run. So that you don't kill yourself. If you do that whole marathon pace you do a low low low low first and your coffee that you can finish it and that's towards end you feel strong. You want to test how you feel if you run some fast miles and you're at two marathon pace there and then with recovery. So for that example though so you're saying like the first introduction to this adding spice for that advanced beginner will say marathoner. You would give them like a 16 mile long run maybe you'd have them do what 12 miles at their easy pace and then you'd give them like two miles at their goal marathon pace based upon their current fitness level right hopefully the whole marathon pace is accurate to what their current fitness level is and then we got two more left so then there would be like two easy miles at the end is that correct. Yes and these two easy miles may end up a little faster than the first 12 miles but that's good because you'll want the body after running that two miles at marathon pace you'll activate the body's muscle memory and it will become a little more efficient so that you don't finish super slow but still at the easy zone for recovery. Right and it's not as critical on these long runs I would say to run the last part of the long run at a slow pace right it's most critical in the beginning yeah and practicing like that fast finish air quotes I'm using right now. Yes could be a nice strategy as long as you're feeling good obviously right like we don't want you pushing to you know nine out of ten RPE or race effort right in the end of a long run but I would agree with that Lou that I would tend to be okay with running those last two miles at the easy pace at the higher end of like the easy zone versus like the lower end okay all right so that's like the first example so then what would you say for like someone who's a little bit more advanced from that maybe like an intermediate marathon runner either intermediate or more advanced runner but just in the early beginning of the training phase okay so let's let's in general call that intermediate there are a few things you can do one one way is still doing the marathon pace so I make it longer and make more reps so six miles easy plus two sets of three miles marathon pace followed by followed by two miles easy so two times three point three five plus two is five two times five ten ten plus six sixteen so there's two reps of three miles marathon pace and two miles easy why I chose three miles because three miles is about five k and for people who's in this advanced category running a five k at marathon pace is pretty doable and mentally if you's like oh we just five k at a marathon pace that will feel that feels way easier than an actual five k so you can do that and two miles recovery that's definitely more than enough for you to get back to it and then you get harder the next time the right repetitions and if you count that it is whole long run there are six miles at a marathon pace but because I spread out it's considered intermediate because it's not too hard it doesn't break you so this is the one hard so you do those that like five k or three miles at marathon pace and you're repeating that two times and we didn't say this earlier in your bio that your full-time job is a computational chemist so you see how like quick Lewis with the numbers there he was spinning out and I don't know if you guys followed that but that was definitely I couldn't follow that fast so we're really doing repeat three miles at marathon pace after what was the warm-up did you use in that example six miles warm-up so six miles easy pace warm-up you're in control keeping your heart rate and check everything's feeling easy you're already starting to you know take your fluids in right you're taking you definitely taking a gel by now and now you're like okay I'm ready to like work at my marathon pace the pace that I'm going to be going for my race and I'm just going to do this for three miles and you're you're keeping your mind focused on only that three miles and you're running that at marathon pace and then you're recovering how long is the recovery are you using one mile in between there for it easy for this case I used two miles not recovery because it's more for the beginner intermediate advanced beginner exactly okay so two miles to really recover and then you're going to go for another three at marathon pace and then there was two on the back end yes so that's it all right so there we go there's my slow math right there right that six easy three at marathon pace two easy three at marathon pace and then two easy again okay yes we just need to slow it down a little bit for Dwayne here I'm not the numbers guy my wife's the accountant so gotcha and the other thing Lou that I love about these runs is for me man these fly by so much more because it really and I think it's such a great thing to practice right for like because we talk about the race strategy is breaking it into different sections or parts and really forcing only on those miles that you're in and for here this really gets me to lock in it like okay I'm running three miles at this marathon pace like Dwayne that's all you need to focus on right now let's you know check in every once in a while to make sure I'm in my marathon pace in my watch but I'm just like focusing on that and then you know you recover and you're like all right let me do that again like you're not thinking about 16 miles wow this number so big man this is going to take me you know two plus hours whatever close to three whatever your pace is that you're running right and it just makes it so much more digestible I think from like a mental standpoint at least for me and I know clients that say the same thing yes yes absolutely indeed okay so then what would be like an example of someone who is a step up from that fitness level they're different direction you can go from now so either make it harder into the temple runs or for someone who's at a higher fitness you may reduce the recovery we said that's too much recovery for now but then you can reduce that to one hour recovery and still keeps three miles marathon pace and you can also add repeats are then two reps you can add three reps so that's a next level this is one way of going longer marathon pace direction usually is for people who's running faster marathon pace because in in the end it's a time in this band in that zone so for people who's running faster marathon pace it this is then that more marathon miles but the time wise is pretty similar to the one we measured before so this is one way to make it longer the the other way is a different workout but make it more intense which is temple run temple run codecat as an episode it's really important so I'll leave the details to that episode but here is that instead of this long marathon pace run you do temple runs in that long run and this is not a temple workout so you don't do the whole long long temple altogether what I usually do is that I do this temple cruise for example one temple run followed by one minute job and then repeat so let's get back to the 16 miles example again you start with 12 miles easy and then one mile temple run then follow the one mile sorry one minute recovery and then you repeat that three times that's then then finished by one mile easy so that's a pretty hard run and it targets in it's the target's different the other ones keep running longer marathon pace this one's target on getting your boost to get the finished kick it's more it's more similar to the mile 20 in the marathon because you are really tired at that time that marathon pace code code marathon pace at that time well if you keep the same number it may feel more like a temple effort at that time so this is this one have target on different stuff but it's it has its own use and I say it's a step higher study harder than the one we had okay so if someone is kind of new to the pace is just a kind of you know recap there what coach Lew is talking about there are two ways we can go about this is either extending out the marathon pace miles from our example before we use three miles or decreasing the recovery between right or increasing the intervals we could do three by three miles in that like example that we just used or we can actually add in even faster pace running which is at this tempo pace or threshold pace that we call it so now we're actually running faster but we're doing it for smaller chunks for smaller bites with like that cruise that one minute just slight slight recovery just so you don't like totally you know go into the nine ten category of effort level but it really gets those legs turning over quicker definitely a harder run because you're running faster when you're more tired even though you're not holding it for as many miles so definitely different like intention and goal trying to get more leg turnover right like give you that like extra kick at the end and i would say probably like those types of runs you know when we're looking at the whole marathon training cycle for someone who's an advanced marathoner we probably don't want to do those types of runs like every week in training right no no no those are too hard that's that's a really great point even for advanced marathon runners you don't have this spice every week it's just too much you every once in a while have a regular long run just easy pace and every once in a while then you add the spice but not every week you need some recovery in between yeah so recovery is super important guys and yeah so i think that's a great example they gave him really two examples for kind of the advanced case to like add these long runs with spice and you know i also want everyone to you know think about if your goal is the marathon right kind of as you get closer to that race locking in on more that marathon piece is going to be a little bit more beneficial for you versus injecting in a bunch of tempo miles and a bunch of half marathon paste miles into this long run so that's what we tend to do as you go on in the training is to add more that you know marathon paste miles but make sure also that you're not doing the whole run at marathon pace because again they ever get it close to racing and training i know it bites seem like counterintuitive to most of you but i know there's some people out there that are still you know running their daily weekly you know quote unquote easy runs at their marathon pace because they're like hey my goal is to run in eight thirty my goals to run a nine minute pace from my marathon so i need to lock in on that nine minute pace during training and that's not the the goal remember we want this you know you want to have this big differential in your pieces and that's where like the magic happens is making sure that we have this hard days hard so these long runs with spice are hard and then you're keeping your easy days easy so like coach lu said that we can recover from this type of training which is super important and you don't need to run all of your runs at your goal marathon pace in order to run that pace during your race and i think that's something that we're going to probably continually need to say but the polarization in your training is key and in your pieces so yeah this is definitely super helpful any anything you want to add to those examples or any of those points there are coach i can add examples for although one you just mentioned that's super important that if if you run everyone at marathon pace then your marathon pace just cannot get faster because there's some limit and i have been there i believe you have been there and it's all beginner runners so such a common problem we run things too fast we our goal we thought that just run the marathon pace and then see how long you can hold and by training on the race day you may be able to hold 26.2 miles which may be fine but you either tie yourself out or you risk entry or you lose your limit that you just can push to your potential by the polarized training you do why we slow down it sounds continuity why we slow down the e-runs just because you can recover enough for the higher runs then you can push harder in the higher runs and on average your recovery in the north and the bodies still have some like stimulus stimulus stimulus less for the higher runs to prepare for the race day and you go all out only on the race day because after a really all out run you need to take a break afterwards that's really a hard all out run if you do that in your training you can imagine take a week of every week that's crazy so that's why we don't do a hundred percent in our training yeah thank you for that clarification such an important concept guys this is gold the coach Lou is sharing with you here is there anything else that you wanted to share about long runs of spice that we didn't cover today I guess we can cover a little bit about the advanced super advanced long run spice and go for you have done that before it's a 16 miles or 18 mile run and that's really for people who's ready to push a PR or BQ or something really hard you can have up to 10 miles maximum pace in your long run non-stop 10 miles or you can make it nine miles marathon pace with one mile temple at the end so you'll be super super tired but then you push a little harder at the end and then of course a little recovery at the end so for example 16 miles we have this example six five miles easy nine miles at marathon pace one mile at a temple and then one mile at easy pace so that you can be your peak run and that's really hard or even more advanced people have this tune up race so replace that replace that meet in the medium miles with an actual half marathon for example if you train it for marathon so you 60 miles again half marathon step 30 miles you do two two miles easy and you run that half marathon either at marathon pace or go all out then one mile recovery so this one is going to be super spicy and that's only for super advanced runners because if not then you cannot recover in time that will fix your training so all these are like the peak of your runs and that usually happen between three to five weeks or two to five weeks before your actual marathon so that's the right yeah no thank you for bringing that up and I think it's such an important point that you make as far as the recovery and as you say Lou it's part of the training and that's why recovery is one of our six steps to how we grow as runners is making sure we are taking recovery into account so I think you bring up a great point about doing a tune up half marathon for marathon training and you know I think a lot of runners do this and I think you know everyone needs to question and how they design that are they being guided by a coach because as Lou just mentioned there are a lot of variables that go into that in how you program that what is the effort level for that half marathon if you're going all out trying to get a half marathon PR during your marathon peak build then you're going to have to make sure you significantly modify the following week for recovery right and so just keep that in mind I think you very have a great point and I think it's a you know reason why a lot of people almost feel flat going into their marathon or possibly get injured right so just think about the load that we're adding to our bodies and these stresses you know the key is adding the right amount of stress and load without going overboard right and going down to the you know the breaking down type of cycle so just to recap guys what we really covered today and what you learned about these long runs with spices you know coach Lou covered like what are long run workouts or these long runs with spice who should consider these long run workouts so you first time marathoners you should not be implementing anything that we talked about today it's good to know now I like that you're learning learn digest it and say okay if I do everything I should be doing for where you are in your running journey then you'll eventually get to these right we talked about what are the benefits of long run workouts you know why we should incorporate these and the physical the mental benefits we talked about we talked about when you should be adding these in throughout your training cycle and then you know different types of examples Lou gave us some great examples of like a beginner intermediate advanced then even advanced plus we kind of got to those like the little bonus that we weren't planning on chatting about today so hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode in which we guided you through really various ways to inject some freshness and excitement into your long distance runs so don't let your long runs be boring anymore spice them up and transform your running fitness and routine your body will thank you for it and if you're wondering how to specifically structure these out for your unique circumstances and time constraints in a safe manner so you don't get injured that's exactly what coach Lou and our team within our healthy runner kind of coaching program really specialize in designing we provide you the structured run plan strength training for running proper mindset nutrition and recovery that Lou talked about today with full support from our healthy runner coaching team and accountability and if you want to learn more about that just simply click the link in the show notes or just go to spark healthy runner dot com forward slash coaching learn dot spark healthy runner dot com forward slash coaching and don't forget to download your free marathon training blueprint for those training for the marathon we give a lot of great marathon examples you can get a lot more within that blueprint click the link in the show notes and coach Lou you know as always thank you so much for taking time out of your day to come on and educate our community about this fun field long run with spice topic let's do it I'm so happy to be here I'm here to ask to answer questions and yeah let's spice things up yeah so get all of coach Lou's contact info in the show notes reach out send him any questions he's just a wealth of knowledge and thank you for listening to this episode whether you're listening during a run or in your car on the podcast or if you're watching the video version on the spark healthy runner youtube channel if you enjoyed it please copy the link and share it with a runner you know who is stuck in their long run journey and needs a little spark or add some spice be sure to subscribe to our spark healthy runner youtube channel or the healthy runner podcast for more exciting running tips and tricks happy running and as always let's maintain a strong mind a strong body and let's just keep on running until next time thank you as always for listening to the healthy runner podcast where we help you get stronger run faster and enjoy lifelong injury free running if you found this content valuable here's five ways we can help you grow as a runner for free one grab a free copy of my spark blueprint at learn.sparkhealthyrunner.com to follow my Instagram page at spark healthy runner three join my free group by searching healthy runner on Facebook four subscribe to my youtube channel at youtube.com forward slash spark healthy runner five leave us a five star review so we can gain access to more experts in the running field and bring those lessons back to you here don't forget to hit the subscribe button on apple podcast or the follow button on Spotify so you don't miss the next episode of healthy runner so you can maintain a strong mind a strong body and just keep running lastly if you've been struggling with the constant injury cycle not eating the right foods for running or not getting faster as a runner and you are ready to invest in becoming a lifelong injury free runner head to spark healthy runner dot com to apply for a one on one signature coaching program thank you again i mean it from the bottom of my heart that i appreciate you for listening and sharing this podcast with a running friend who can use the help now go and crush your run today see you next week