Is running 20km or more each weekend too much?

Question

I'm preparing for running a 30 km road race (18/19 miles) in two months.

For the moment I have achieved 21 km, twice last year and once this year (last week end).

I have been advised not to increase the running distance more than 10% each for each long run ( each week end for me). That means I plan something like running 22km, 24km, 26km, 28km, 30km, in the next week ends.

I wonder if is it considered harmfull to run a half-marathon each week end ? Does it make the possibility of injury higher ? Is it irresponsible for a training plan ?

Beside, during the working week, I run 3 times, 5 km.

Answer 1

I cannot tell whether running 21+ km once a week is too much for you body, but I can say that I have done this weekly for the last 2 years (give and take) without any major problems. Just LSR (long slow runs), not races every week! I do 8-12 HM races a year and usually 2-3 marathons.

One old rule-of-thump is that you should run 1.5 x you target distance on a weekly basis with one long run to take up a good part of this. The rest should be restitution runs, tempo runs and possibly intervals. For a 30 km target, I would run 5 km (rest), 10 km (tempo), 5 km (intervals), 15-20 km (LSR)...

As for your plan, it is usually enough to run just 2/3 or 3/4 of the target distance. So in your case, you can do with 22 km. Likewise, if you train for a marathon, you usually don't run more than 30 km before the event itself.

Answer 2

Since you have 8 weeks left you have plenty of time to build your LSD base. Lets assume that your 21k was your week one, the rest of your LSD runs would look something like two weeks of increased distance, followed by an easy week, then another two weeks. You should then taper your last 2-3 weeks before your race. I think at the 30k distance you can make your training run farther than your race goal. If you were training for a marathon you would not do this. For example, my training (for a marathon) includes at least 4 - 30k runs, and 2 - 35-38k runs.

You want to have a cycle of hard and easy to give your body sometime to recover while still building on the base. You should also consider two mid week workouts that would encompass tempo, speed and hills.