To Long Run Or Not To Long Run?

It's miserably hot outside.  The heat is "oppressive."  It's just another day in the gulf south.  All the literature you read about running says you have to have a long run each week which totals twenty percent of your mileage.  That's awesome and all, but the odds that you can do this week in and week out, especially as you approach higher training volumes, is pretty slim in this weather.  To be fair, I don't even have my (high school) athletes do long runs.  A coach once told me that his runner did a twenty miler in the summer lead up to cross country.  That kid probably would have run a great marathon under that training, but his race was 17 miles shorter.

Even general training is specific.  What I mean is, do football players go cycling during their general prep phase?  Do basketball players work on the fundamentals of their tennis serve?  No.  Even running is not all created equal.  Doing 20 milers are about teaching the body to deal with fat metabolism and glycogen sparing.  You will never run out of glycogen in a 3 mile race just off of a normal diet, much less an endurance athlete specific diet.  So doing long runs in the summer before your cross country season might be a little less specific than you realize.  Couple that with the heat which makes doing any running over 45-60 minutes a chore and you have good reason to skip the long runs altogether.

Your best bet is to get a few more runs or tempo workouts that have medium volume ranges, be consistent with them, and if you really want to add more volume, throw in some doubles.  Do a couple 60+ minute runs if you are looking for some mental toughness training, but only once or twice at most because for the most part high school athletes don't need to do long runs during the summer months.