Tempo and "Long Run" combined? (Read 336 times)

Starting in November I plan on alternating my Sunday LR's each week.    one week with focusing on building distance back up & then following week have some sort of tempo built in..  

This is exactly what I've been doing recently. It's not the exact same training, of course, but similar ideas. On Sunday I'll do a 14-16 mile long run at a comfortable pace, but then the next Sunday I'll do a 6-8 mile tempo as part of my 14-16 mile long run. During my weeks when I don't do a long tempo, I'll do a shorter, 3-4 mile tempo at a faster pace, so that way I'm getting in both kinds of work.

As for the original poster, if a person is running 30-40mpw, doing a proper tempo of any kind will essentially turn into your long run no matter what. If you did a 2 mile WU, 4 mile tempo, and 2 mile CD, that makes 8 miles, which would be on the upper end of long-run distance anyway. Additionally, for marathon training, you definitely want to incorporate faster stuff into your long runs occasionally, because your body needs to have some kind of adaptation to faster paces over longer distances for a race like that- intervals will only help to a point when the race is 26.2 miles.