Missed marathon-training miles rarely come from one big disruption. More often, a shortened easy run here and a skipped one there leave a few blank spaces in an otherwise steady week. By Friday, those missed miles can leave a small gap in your weekly total.
And when you’re already planning to spend a few hours on the road during your Sunday long run, tacking on a few extra miles can seem like no big deal—a simple way to keep the week’s mileage on track. But experts say this seemingly harmless adjustment is a huge mistake. 🏃🏻♀️ Recognize symptoms, recover safely, and build strength to prevent setbacks with the Runner’s World Guide to Common Running Injuries. Missing a few runs won’t ruin a marathon build.
But trying to force those miles back into one already demanding effort can turn a minor disruption into a bigger setback—raising your recovery demands, muddying your fitness progress, and compromising the training still ahead. Ahead, coaches break down how to rework a disrupted training week without overloading your long run and how your long runs can help you gauge race-day readiness. A planned long run is already one of the week’s biggest physical stressors.
Add a few unplanned miles on top, and you increase fatigue and recovery demands at a point when you have not established the supporting volume to absorb them. General guidelines suggest your long run should account for no more than 25 to 30 percent of weekly mileage, Kai Ng, a New York City–based RRCA- and USATF-certified run coach, previously told Runner’s World. For example, that means if a 16-mile long run in a 48-mile week becomes anything longer, you’re pushing well over the top of that line and elevating your risk of injury.
Gradually increasing the distance of your long run develops endurance and durability while giving you a place to practice fueling, pacing, and staying composed on tired legs. The goal of a long run isn’t to jam the rest of your weekly miles into one huge effort; it’s to teach your body to handle longer distances and more time on feet—and to recover well enough to keep your training going, Roberto Mandje, a former Olympian and coach, previously told Runner’s World. It’s for this reason that Flagstaff-based run coach Kim Conley, a former Olympian in the 5,000 meters, also told Runner’s World that she caps beginner long runs at three hours rather than forcing an exhausting mileage target.
A well-designed long run can offer a useful read on marathon readiness. For experienced runners, controlled marathon-pace work within a long run can show how goal pace feels under fatigue and help determine whether that target is sustainable, Conley says. The longer effort also gives runners a chance to test race-day fueling strategies.
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