Run Farther without Knee Pain (1 long run by distance)
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In this post you’ll learn how to run farther without knee pain with 1 long run each week.
If you’re looking for running based on time with a long run, that's another post here.
This video is adding 1 long run a week for the runners who track everything by distance.
There’s a big key to adding distance to your long run without creating knee pain and that’s what you'll learn in this video.
To do this, first you’ll need to know a few things
How far can you run without knee pain?
Your pace
What’s your goal long run distance?
How many times a week do you run?
Your total running distance without knee pain each week
Ok while you’re gathering that info let’s look at an example to use.
We’ll use the information from my client Jen and what she was trying before we worked together.
She was running sporadically, about 4 miles at a time, but really wanted to get consistent and knew signing up for a race was a great way to stay motivated and have it well planned out.
So she signed up for a half marathon and found a plan on Google.
She started off great. Running 4 days a week
1 cross training day
2 rest days
Strength training after 2 of her shorter runs
Then she got a cold and could barely breathe for like 2 weeks.
The way it panned out meant she missed 2 long runs.
She didn’t want to get off course so she continued the planned long run for the week she got back to it.
Boy did that run suck.
She could barely finish it because her knees were killing her.
She went home and foam rolled the heck out of her IT bands and made sure to do that all week.
By Thursday her knees still didn’t feel better.
Was she going to be able to even do the half that was coming up so soon?
So let’s look at this.
Jen missed 2 weeks of training so let’s call them weeks 5 and 6 of a standard 12 week plan.
So in the plan she googled, week 5 is an 8 mile run and week 6 is a 5k race.
So Jen thought this was fine because she knew she could run 5k no problem.
So on this plan, week 4 was 7 miles, and week 7 was 9 miles.
It’s not that Jen’s knees wouldn’t be able to get through the half marathon in a few weeks like she thought.
It’s that she jumped from one distance to another too soon.
See our knees can take the pounding on the pavement but it needs to have the amount of running added gradually over time, in a systematic way.
This is the 10% rule.
Which means to keep your knees happy you can run more each week by no more than 10% distance or time.
So for Jen she was tracking distance.
So to keep her knees happy she should run no more than 10% more miles each week.
And since she does 1 long run and other 3 are the same shorter distances
Means her long run should be no more than 10% of her total mileage from the week before.
So let’s use her info for the example so you can figure out what the 10% rules means for your running plan.
Jen could run 7 miles without knee pain.
Her pace was 9:30 minute/mile.
Her goal distance was 13.1, a half marathon
She runs 4 days a week
Her weekly mileage without knee pain was 16 miles. The 7 miles and then 3- 3 mile runs
So for Jen she sticks to no faster than 9:30 minute/mile pace, and even better if she does her long runs crazy slow.
So how do you follow the 10% rule?
For this example we look at 10% of the total weekly mileage because Laura wants 1 long run a week.
So Laura’s total weekly mileage without knee pain is 16 miles.
We take 16 times 0.1 to find 10% is 1.6 miles.
Jen wants 1 long run and the other runs will be 3 miles each.
So her new long run is 7 plus 1.6 miles to follow the 10% rule.
So her new long run is 8.6 miles
And if we go back to our example she had run 9 miles that week she got back to it.
9 miles is more than 8.6
So 9 miles is more than a 10% increase. It doesn’t follow the 10% rule.
When Jen started working with me she was nervous so she even decided to stay safe and would run a little less than that 8.6 miles that week, which was fine because the rule is that you can go no more than 10%, but you can always do less.
So there you have it.
The key to running farther on your long run each week without knee pain is to follow the 10% rule.
If you want a quick way to check if your long run follows the 10% rule check out this link to request access to a Google Sheet I made and it will do the math for you.
Watch the video below
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