It's not all about the long run.

Well I had my first mention of "I need to focus more on my long runs for me to be successful in my marathon this fall" comment this summer. I think for the beginner runner that is probably true but they are unlikely to mutter those words as they don't know what's going on. It's usually the more experienced members who say stuff like that.

The thing is it's not the long runs it's the quality runs that make the difference. Yes your long runs are important and to a certain degree they will make you faster but I it's thinks it's the hill work and the speed work that make that make you faster ultimately. When I used to train for marathons I would do 2 and many times 3 hard workouts a week. Yes I did do two long runs a week but I didn't consider them a hard workout. I would regularly run hard. My week would consist of (example week)Monday easy run (60 min), Tuesday track, Wednesday long (90 min or so), Thursday hills, Friday easy, Saturday hard (most likely a race of sorts) and Sunday long (2 hours or more). So you see I thought of my long run as more of a recovery workout.

I think we want to the long runs to do more for us because they are easier than running hard  and heck they are long so they must make a big difference. Like I said they are important but it's what you do on your quality days that will make the biggest improvement in your running and faster.

I think you'll find that if you are running poorly in hard workouts that you probably are running poorly in your races and I can tell it's not because you are not maximizing your long runs it because your quality runs aren't going well. So you need to fix that, how do you do that, well that's a good question and would depend on the situation and the person I suppose. I would imagine talking to someone with experience (me) would be helpful as they might be able to see things that you don't.  From experience it takes time sometimes to figure this stuff out and can be fixed quicker when you get someone else's view point as they may see something in your plan or workouts that you might not see. I had this bad patch once with my running it wasn't until 10 years later  while I was looking at some old training logs that I saw what it was I did wrong and why I wasn't running well during that particular period, it was plain as day but it took 10 years to become clear to me.

So your long runs are important but to make the bigger improvement and faster you need to focus on your quality works and although harder they will help your running the most.