Hello and welcome to episode number three of the Smart Running podcast.

I am Debbie Boyle's coach at Mojo for Running.

Today we'll talk about the long run.

By that I mean your weekly long run.

That's assuming your micro cycle is a week, but it doesn't have to be.

Based on your life, work, and the quirks unique to your body, you may prefer a 10-day

micro cycle, 8 days, 11 days.

That's fine too.

It's important to listen to your body, learn from your body, and design a training

program that's appropriate for your body.

But whatever your micro-training cycle,

you should always incorporate a long run, usually once per cycle.

Since most people plan their running schedule on a weekly basis,

that's the cycle I'll use as an example.

Last time we talked about hard, easy training,

and we said you should have at least one easy day between each two hard days.

But we didn't talk about the weekend. That's because that's when most people do their once weekly long run.

Now, when we talked about hard easy days, I said your hard days should either be hard because they are

longer or hard because they include speed work. If you are in the base building phase of your

training macro cycle, and by that I mean the first portion of it, then your hard day would definitely

be a long day. That's because in the base building period,

your focus is on just getting in more miles,

...