That's a hefty goal you have there 8mm long run. Define long run for me please.
Long runs for me are above 14 miles less than that I call them medium runs.
For me, at my current level of conditioning, a long run is more than an hour. If I run 9-10mm pace, that's anything over six miles or so. But even as my running fitness continues to improve, and my pace comes down and the distance I can cover becomes greater for a given amount of time, I'll probably use the time criterion rather the mileage criterion for defining a long run. My strength-training workouts are also designed to last about an hour, which is a nice daily average. Any exercise over an hour starts to feel long, and I'm only up for that, mentally and practically, once a week.
So basically, the first step would be to get to being able to run 8mm as a tempo pace for an hour. I haven't run tempo pace for a while, but, on a good day, I think I could probably manage 8:30mm right now. On a run a month or so ago, I think I ran aerobically for almost an hour at 8:50 pace, but I haven't come close to that since. I think my body's still busing adapting to the greater stress of greater mileage and greater frequency, and that a breakthrough of sorts will happen sometime in the fall. That's often how it happens for me; plateau for a while, then one day, out of the blue, a jump up in fitness. Like on the weights, one day all of a sudden you find yourself doing more reps, and you know it's time to add more weight.
After getting to the point where I can run aerobically at 8mm pace for an hour, the really long-term goal would be to run two hours at 8mm pace. That would be great.
It's such a boost of confidence when one reaches a goal isn't it? and that's when we need to be the most careful and not get carried away.
Yep, I purposely took yesterday off, to make sure I wouldn't get carried away, but then later in the day I regretted not running at least a bit. My legs were chomping at the bit. I did manage to get most of the mid-body st exercises I missed on Friday in, though, so I wasn't a complete delinquent. This week I'm also shooting for 30mpw or so, but I may try a slightly different approach. I want to be good and fresh for my long run on Saturday. I'd like to do 11-12 miles again. I may also try to do my Tuesday and Thursday mezzo runs as fartleks, see what that's like. Fartleks might be more reasonable than a tempo run first thing in the morning.
What was interesting during the race was that my legs wanted to go faster but ironically my aerobic conditioning was holding me back.
I think the way you're using 'aerobic conditioning' in the last sentence is a bit different that the way I intend it in defining an 'aerobic run.' Over a 5k distance, my aerobic conditioning, along with my lactate conditioning, would be the limiting factor as well. I know my legs wouldn't get tired. And I may even be able to beat you in an all-out sprint
. What took me a while in getting my long run distance up was waiting for my legs/joints to adapt to the sustained repetitive stress. I attribute last fall's trails and tribulations--the MCL sprain and the ITBS--as TMTS while building up the distance.