Make Your Long Run Longer without Knee Pain

Today you’ll learn how to run longer, run more without knee pain by adding more running time to 1 long run a week.

If you’re looking to keep all your runs the same length I made another video about that, the link is here.

And if you’re looking to run 1 long run a week but you do it tracking distance I also have another video about that, that link is here.

Ok so this video is for those runners who want 1 long run each week, run shorter distances at other times through the week, and need to run longer without knee pain.

Stay with me to learn how to run longer without knee pain because running’s a big part of your life you should be able to run without knee pain.

Ok first to run longer without knee pain you need to know a few things.

How long you currently run without knee pain

Your pace

How long your goal run is

How many runs a week you do

Your total run time for the week without knee pain

Gather all that info while you’re watching and you’ll learn how to use all the information to plan your long run each without knee pain.

Let’s look at an example for running longer without knee pain for my client Laura.

Laura was training for a half marathon so she was running 4 days a week.

The plan she followed said she needed to be able to run 4 miles or 45 minutes without stopping so she worked on that first.

After a few weeks she hit her 45 minute mark and so she started week 1 of the training plan she found on Google.

3 weeks in she noticed she counted wrong and she was a week off with her training.

She knew she had to keep her taper weeks at the end so to make up for it she skipped a week of training (the long run was 70 minutes) and went straight to week 5 (with a  90 minute long run)

After her Sunday long run her knees really hurt.

Every time she got up from the couch that day her knees screamed.

She chalked it up to just doing more, so she iced her knees.

By Thursday her knees still hadn’t loosened up even after 2 short runs on Monday and Wednesday, and 2 cross training days Tuesday and Thursday.

She worried she couldn’t get through the half if her knees already felt like this.

Laura really wanted to finish this training plan and cross that finish line in her first half marathon.

And it’s not that her knees couldn’t hold out for all that time running.

It’s that she ran too much too soon.

Remember when she skipped a week of training?

That is the key to the knee pain in her example.

See in order to run more without knee pain you need to follow the 10% rule.

The 10% rule says run no more than 10% more in distance or time each week.

When Laura skipped a week she jumped way past 10%.

So how should she have done this?

This is where you’ll learn how to take the info we gathered earlier to run more without knee pain.

Ok so with Laura’s example let’s see how to plan this out to not cause knee pain.

Laura could run 45 minutes 4x/week without knee pain for a total of 180 minutes

Laura’s pace is 11 minute/mile.

Her goal time to finish the half is 2.5 hours.

She runs 4 times a week, 1 long run and 3 shorter, equal runs.

Total starting running time without knee pain is 180 minutes 

Ok so for Laura to keep her knees happy when she’s running she should increase her total running time by no more than 10% each week.

Her current total running time is 180 minutes, so take 180 times 0.1 to get 10% of 180, which is 18 minutes.

And Laura is doing 1 long run and the other 3 throughout the week will stay the 45 minutes.

So we took Laura’s 45 minutes plus 18 minutes to get 63 minutes.

Laura admitted she didn’t like running and ending in something like 63, it needs to end in a 5 or a 0.

So she wanted to just up her long run to 65 minutes.

But, does that follow the 10% rule?

No it doesn’t. 65 minutes is more than 10% more than 45 minutes.

So she agreed to drop her long run to 60 minutes.

So that was her new long run time 60 minutes.

She ran 60 minutes on Sunday and the other 3 days a week she ran 45 minutes.

She continued that way for her running journey and she was able to finish her half marathon in just under the 2.5 hours she wanted. 

And she did it without knee pain.

So that’s how Laura succeeded in running more each week without knee pain.

By sticking to the 10% rule she was able to add more time each week to the long run and keep her knees happy.

But, Ali why did I need to know Laura’s pace and goal time. You didn’t even use that information to figure it all out?

You’re right.

It’s important to know your pace when running more because as part of the 10% rule you need to only run more or run faster, not both. So Laura keeps her pace in mind when she runs so she stays at that pace or even better, even slower.

And it’s good to know what the goal running time is so you know what you’re striving for.

Ok there you have it.

The key to keeping up with running more each week without knee pain is following the 10% rule.

If you want a quick way to use the 10% rule for your long run I created a handy Google Sheet so you don’t have to do the math. Check out that link to request access.

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