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The Science of the Long Run

49 bytes added, 10:26, 8 December 2012
The Long Run and Marathon Performance
This section summarizes the studies that correlate the long run against various factors including marathon finish time and hitting the wall, or injury rate.
==The Long Run and Marathon Performance==
An evaluation of A 1970's study looked for correlations between marathon finish times against and metrics from the final two months of training from before the 1970srace<ref name="Slovic-1977"/> is shown below. There is an obvious correlation between the finishing time and both the longest run and overall mileage.
{| class="wikitable"
!Time!!Max Week!!Longest run!!Number of 20+ mile runs!!Mileage over two months
|[[File:Number of 20plus mile runs.jpg|none|thumb|500px|The number of 20+ mile long runs against finish time.]]
|}
Another similar study showed that the number of runs over 16, over 20 miles, the length of the longest run and overall mileage are correlated with finish time<ref name="McKelvie-1985"/>. One study separated out overall mileage from the long run<ref name="Dolgener-1994"/>. In that study, two groups of runners did the same long run schedule but their overall weekly mileage either increased from 18 miles to 39 miles, or from 23 miles to 49 miles. The marathon performance was identical between the groups, suggesting that long run distance may be more important than overall mileage.  
==The Long Run and Hitting the Wall==
A study of 315 marathon runners evaluated the factors that are correlated with reported 'Hitting the Wall'. The length of the longest run but not weekly mileage was correlated hitting the wall<ref name="BumanBrewer2008"/>. Further analysis showed that a longest long run of 20 miles or less increased the chance of hitting the wall by 50%<ref name="BumanBrewer2009"/>.