Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Is Running Long Sunday A Bad Idea?

I scan the Active.com Triathlete e-mails that pop up in my in-box for occasionally interesting articles. A recent entry caught my eye entitled "Why You Should Stop Running Long on Sundays." The article by Rich Strauss, a coach with Endurance Nation, suggested that a long run on Sunday following a long Saturday ride is a bad idea. While Rich acknowledges that many, if not most, triathletes follow this weekend warrior pattern, he argues that it is bad training. The argument goes that after two consecutive days of long workouts, the next few days are spent recovering from the hard weekend and we lose quality training days during the first half of the week.

I've trained both ways. When I train for longer events, I tend to ride long on the weekend, then do my long run mid week. However, for shorter training, I tend to bunch the long workouts in on the weekend. Its usually simply a matter of the weekends being the most convenient time to do these longer workouts. There is probably a lot to be said for this separation of long workouts. I think I'll try to put this in practice. Anyone else doing this, or do most of us bunch up the long workouts on the weekend because it is most convenience from a work schedule standpoint?

I have the same question about brick workouts. No doubt a mile run after a long ride helps us train for transitions, but do longer brick runs after a ride do much for our overall fitness. I do them, but I wonder if they make me fitter, or simply more fatigued during the following days. Would I be better off holding off the run for the next day or two and do it faster?

2 comments:

  1. I read that as well. I am a weekend warrior, gives me the most time to complete these long runs and rides. My monday is no off day either, its a trainer ride, short 30-45 minutes, but it is loaded with leg burner intervals. then tuesday I recover

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  2. I am following the competitive program in BeIronFit and my weekend is long ride+short run on Saturday and Sunday's run is getting longer. I don't have issue with it except that it comes on the heals of swim/bike/run throughout the week - so I'm exhausted.

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