A common question I see on social media is “how should I train for X distance race?”
This is too simplistic of a question. Not everyone should train the same way for the same distance race. There are many considerations that will affect how we should train, the biggest of which is our goal.
To use the most common example, a marathoner who is looking to “just finish” and a marathoner looking for a specific time goal, especially if that time goal is aggressive like breaking 3 hours or qualifying for Boston, need different training.
If your only goal for the marathon is to finish, then your training is all about building the long run since the marathon is basically an extended long run. Everything else you do supports the long run.
If you’re running for a specific time, especially an aggressive one, there is much more to the training. The long run is a key supportive component of your training but it’s not enough. You need the volume, both in overall weekly and monthly totals and long runs, to support the ability to cover the distance. However, you also need many other components of training to do so at the pace needed to meet your goal. You need to improve your fitness and efficiency to be able to hold a relatively fast pace for a long time, which is a lot different than being able to “just” cover the distance.
The same is true at any race distance. Even in a 5K, you might not have a “just finish” goal but a 40 minute goal and a 20 minute mile goal do require different training because they require different physiological demands and those who do have a “just finish” goal definitely have different needs than someone who is trying to run at 6:00 per mile or faster.
So be careful about asking for general training advice for a given race distance because the training advice should be very different depending on what your goals for that distance are. Also, if you feel like offering advice, be very careful to not offer advice assuming one goal when someone might be interested in a different goal with completely different needs.